#14 Anabel McGaughey Stuart
Anabel: May 4, 1840 – March 19, 1914
Dr. Anabel McGaughey Stuart was truly a remarkable woman. She was the eldest of eight children. When her parents died, she raised her younger siblings. Of the eight children, three sisters became successful professional women – significantly noteworthy for the 19th Century. Anabel became a physician (the first female doctor in Santa Rosa), LJ Bennett (also buried here) was a pharmacist and owned her own pharmacy (across from the courthouse), and Frances McGaughey Martin (second female attorney in Santa Rosa, first woman elected to office – Superintendent of Schools, and a prominent suffragist).
Anabel began her medical career in the field as a nurse, assisting her physician husband who served with the Northern army. She was one of the approximately three to four thousand women who served in the Civil War as either nurses or doctors. In Santa Rosa her practice as a doctor spanned many decades. She was well-known for delivering many of the town’s babies and was affectionately referred to as “Dr. Dear.” Her death was mourned by the entire city whose residents dedicated a fountain in her honor at the Carnegie Library (which used to be where the present library now stands).
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