Dr. Elizabeth Ann Follansbee, M.D.

Elizabeth Ann Follansbee, MD

Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/63519862/elizabeth-ann-follansbee: accessed 06 May 2023), memorial page for Dr Elizabeth Ann Follansbee (9 Dec 1839–22 Aug 1917), Find a Grave Memorial ID 63519862, citing Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, USA; Maintained by Athanatos (contributor 46907585).

Dr. Elizabeth Ann Follansbee was the first woman on the faculty of a medical school in California. She attended medical school at the University of California, one of only two women students enrolled there in 1875. Facing much resistance, she left after a year and continued her medical training at the University of Michigan, before completing her degree in 1877 at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.

She returned to California, and co-founded the Women’s and Children’s Hospital of San Francisco with Drs. Charlotte Blake Brown, Martha Bucknell and Sara E. Brown. In 1883, Follansbee moved to the warmer dryer climate of Los Angeles for health reasons, where she became the first woman admitted as a member of the Los Angeles County Medical Association. She taught pediatrics and chaired the pediatrics department at the University of Southern California, and arranged for women medical school graduates of the school to intern at the Children’s Hospital of San Francisco.

When The California Medical and Surgical Reporter launched in 1905, Follansbee was an assistant editor. For two years, she shared a small practice in pediatrics with Rose Talbot Bullard, another early woman physician in Los Angeles. She was also on-call physician at the Florence Home for Erring Girls in the 1890s.

Follansbee died in 1917, at age 77, in Los Angeles

Name: Elizabeth Ann Follansbee
Birth Date: 1839
Death Date: August 22, 1917
Death Place: Los Angeles, CA
Type Practice: Allopath
Practice Specialities: Los Angeles, CA, 1877
Licenses: CA, 1877
Practice Dates Places: Los Angeles, CA, 1877
Medical School: Medical College of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1877, (G)
Professorship: University of Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles, disease of children
JAMA Citation: 69:929; (M)

Directory of Deceased American Physicians, 1804-1929

• Dr. Elizabeth Follansbee, First Woman Physician in Los Angeles
• 2 Doctors Who Overcame Sexism - Los Angeles Times
• Becoming a Doctor in the 19th Century - Los Angeles Times

NOTE: Her cousin, Martha Tracy, M.D., D.P.H., was the Dean of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) from 1917-1940, and lead the institution through the Great Depression. She created a department of preventive medicine within the college and was the first professor of preventive medicine at WMCP.

Additional Sources:

Extensive family history and genealogy:

• A history of California and an extended history of its southern coast counties, also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present
• Volume 2
• by Guinn, James Miller, 1834-1918
• Publication date 1907
• Publisher Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
• Contributor Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
• Possible copyright status NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT
• Pages 875 - 878
• https://archive.org/details/historyofcalifor02guin/page/n387/mode/1up

DAR Information:

• Title Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine, Volume 53
• Contributor Daughters of the American Revolution
• Publisher R.R. Bowker Company, 1919
• Original from the University of California
• Digitized Feb 3, 2010
• Page 689
• https://books.google.com/books?id=8n0mAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&...

----------------------------------------------------------

• Follansbee, Elizabeth A
• Nat'l Num: 42139
• Chapter: 8067CA
• https://services.dar.org/Public/DAR_Research/search_member/?Action=...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Page 134

Bibliographic information:

• Title A History of the Medical Profession of Southern California
• Author George H. Kress
• Edition 2
• Publisher Times-Mirror, 1910
• Original from the University of California
• Digitized Sep 15, 2011
• Length 209 pages
• https://books.google.com/books?id=4OZQAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obituary, page 147

Bibliographic information:

• Title Southern California Practitioner, Volume 32
• Publisher Stoll & Thayer, 1917
• Original from the University of California
• Digitized Jan 6, 2009
• https://books.google.com/books?id=eJQHAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&...