A Medical Hero Called Tarpon Home: Dr. Mary Jane Safford

By Joe Marzo

You've seen the street that bears the Safford name, and perhaps some of you have been to the Safford House Museum in town. But what you probably don't know is that Dr. Mary Jane Safford is quite possibly the most interesting woman most people have never heard of.

She walked these streets. She treated patients here, white and black alike, charging those who could pay and seeing the rest for free. She may well have saved Tarpon Springs from the yellow fever epidemic that ravaged Tampa in 1887. But Tarpon Springs was only her final chapter.

Mary Jane Safford was born in 1831 in Hyde Park, Vermont, the youngest of five children. Her family were abolitionists whose Illinois home was reputedly a station on the Underground Railroad. Orphaned by nineteen and largely on her own, she pursued an education with fierce determination, mastering French and German along the way. She eventually settled in Cairo, Illinois with her brother Alfred.

When the Civil War broke out, Cairo became a Union staging ground, and Mary didn't hesitate. She spent her own money on medical supplies, learned field nursing, and threw herself into the carnage. She witnessed the battles of Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh. Mary assisted in loading wounded soldiers aboard hospital barges. The soldiers called her the Angel of Cairo. She stood just four feet four inches tall.

A serious back injury finally forced her from the field. She spent the next several years traveling through Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land. She ventured places most women of her era never dreamed of going, and went largely alone. When she returned, she enrolled in medical school.

What she accomplished next was remarkable by any standard, and by the standards of nineteenth century America it was nothing short of revolutionary. She graduated valedictorian of her medical school class in 1869. She traveled to Vienna and Germany for post-graduate surgical training and performed one of the first successful ovarian surgeries ever conducted by a woman. She helped found Boston University School of Medicine, becoming one of America's first trained women gynecologists.

She won a seat on the Boston School Committee at a time when women did not traditionally serve in this role. Mary was a founding vice president of the Association for the Advancement of Women. She lectured nationally on suffrage, racial equality, prison reform and temperance. She co-authored a book on health and wellness for young women. At every turn, in every room she entered, she pushed the door open a little wider for the women coming behind her.

She eventually made her way to Tarpon Springs, set up a medical practice, helped found the library, helped establish a church, and assisted in raising three children who were not her own.

She died here in December 1891, and somehow the world mostly forgot her.

Men of her era accomplished far less and history remembered them forever. Mary Jane Safford deserves to be remembered for her remarkable life and legacy.