PHOTOGRAPH: Carte de Visite of a Female Dentist.
THE FIRST FEMALE DENTIST IN THE US
[Medical] Romberger, Annie L. Carte de Visite. 1889.
According to the 1889 University of Michigan Chronicle, in 1874 Miss Annie Romberger, of Chicago, "entered the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, confronted by opposition of both students and faculty. Nevertheless, she graduated third in her class and her practice, which she has been twelve years in establishing, yields her an income of six thousand dollars."
In 1884 Romberger had been part of a “Gaze party” with Jane Addams and Sarah Hostetter,
touring Versailles in a group led by Henry Gaze. The party is vividly described by Addams in a
letter to Hostetter on June 22, 1884, and Romberger appears elsewhere in Addam’s papers as
follows:
According to JA’s address book, Dr. Annie C. Romberger’s Philadelphia address was
1300 Arch St. While JA did not refer to her by name, SH [Hostetter], who found her “one
of the funniest people she had met,” described her in some detail to her brother Linn
Hostetter. SH, who indicated that Annie had practiced dentistry for two years and had
been successful, was especially impressed that with the fact that Romberger had “cleared
six thousand dollars last year.” Annie was from the “mountain districts of Penn,” SH
reported, and was “the first woman to graduate in dentistry in America and had to really
fight her way through college.” SH also noted that despite the dentist’s success, Annie
was “perfectly uncultivated in her manners,” that she spoke with “a backwoods drawl”
and “probably shocked a good many of the high toned people” but was also “good-
hearted.” Dr. Romberger and JA met again when JA visited her Philadelphia relatives in
in Oct 1886.
(The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, vol 2.)
(#4655858)
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