Resurrecting 'Dr. Jennie'

Physics Professor Takes on Unlikely Mission as Biographer of an Early Alumna

by Sherri Kimmel

January 2, 2010

Tony Morgan sorts through his research on Jennie Taylor. When he teaches his Women and Science course again in 2011, he plans to use her as a case study.

Most Dickinsonians know about Zatae Longsdorff Straw, the college’s first female graduate, who became a physician, Republican politician and first woman president of the American Medical Association. But few know this 1887 graduate had a contemporary who rivaled her as a pioneering woman of science, even though she perished early in her career.

Jennie Taylor, vice president of the class of 1889, was the first dental missionary to Africa, a once-heralded feat that is gaining renewed recognition, due to the efforts of Windsor “Tony” Morgan. The associate professor of physics and astronomy and director of the Charles M. Kanev Planetarium has spent several months uncovering Taylor’s impressive past.

It’s not the likeliest pursuit for a man of science. Biographical research certainly wasn’t on Morgan’s mind in 2007 when, merely seeking material to include in his course Women and Science in the United States, he typed a few words into the search bar of The New York Times Web site. When “woman,” “doctor,” “Dickinson” brought up Jennie Taylor he was surprised—and instantly hooked.

“What drew me to her was science,” he says. “It was unusual back then for a woman to go to college. Not only was she one of the first women to come to Dickinson, but she became a scientist, a doctor, a dentist. She used what she learned at Dickinson and medical college to go to various regions of Africa to spread the gospel and be a doctor, dentist and teacher there. This woman needs to be resurrected.”

At first his interest in Jennie manifested itself as a brief mention in the Women and Science class in 2007 and 2009. “But while talking about her in class this spring I thought to myself, ‘This is something someone could do some work on.’ Next thing I knew, I was saying to myself, ‘I could.’ ”

And so in early June he began his first foray into historical research, with funding from the college’s Research and Development Committee. Twice he visited the Methodist archives at Drew University, where he found documents about Taylor as well as her husband and fellow missionary, Charles Gordon. He read diaries of her contemporaries and about her mission’s work in The African News, a newspaper published by the church.

At the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, the first medical school solely for women and now part of Drexel University, he learned more. Taylor had graduated in 1889, just two years after Zatae Longsdorff.

From Taylor University, named for Jennie’s uncle, William Taylor, a Methodist bishop and founder of the mission she served, Morgan acquired 23 letters that Jennie wrote to her friend Lizzie Akers, daughter of Joseph Akers, an 1858 graduate of Dickinson. He has since transcribed Jennie’s faint handwriting. Morgan also did a phone interview with the only relative he could locate, a granddaughter of Jennie’s brother, who attended Dickinson, as did Jennie’s two other siblings and father.

He also located newspapers across the country that carried reports of her death in Africa at age 30 in December 1897. The death of “Dr. Jennie,” he says, “was big news then, and then she was forgotten—until now.”

Still in the midst of his research, Morgan plans to write an article for a general readership to bring Jennie Taylor’s life its deserved attention.

What he has learned so far is that Taylor was a vegetarian who liked photography and playing the autoharp. After medical-school graduation, she was a resident physician at Philadelphia’s Methodist Episcopal Hospital for about a year, then apprenticed for a few months with a New York dentist who was a friend of her Uncle William.

“She never really liked dentistry,” says Morgan. But there was a need in Africa. “Missionaries had been there for 10 years, and you can imagine the state of their teeth,” he says, shaking his head. “She brought a lot of equipment with her and learned to make dentures.”

In 1893, Taylor sailed from New York to England to Africa. She spent a short time in Liberia then a few months in Congo Free State but most of her time in Angola. Her first dental patient there was her future husband, Charles Gordon, who had spent a decade with the African mission.

They married in Angola and had a daughter, Florence, in October 1896. Taylor died of hematuric fever, which is related to malaria, 14 months later, Morgan explains. Gordon and Florence returned to the United States soon after Jennie’s death. He died in 1909, leaving Florence in the care of his sister in Boston.

Florence became a nurse after graduating from Williamsport Dickinson Seminary, which Jennie had attended before transferring to Dickinson her sophomore year. Morgan tracked Florence back to Massachusetts, then lost track of her after the 1920 census. He speculates she may have married and changed her name. As his research progresses he hopes to learn more about Florence’s fate.

When he next teaches the Women and Science class, Morgan plans to spend a couple of days on Jennie Taylor, unveiling what he hopes to discover about the curriculum used in her medical school and about her medical and dental practices in Africa—of particular interest to the pre-health students who take the class.

“I’m very enthusiastic about this,” he says. “It’s a very fun project—in a different way from physics. It’s like a mystery, tracking down sources. If I didn’t do astronomy, I would do history.”