Our Own Dr. Mary Bruson

Mary Blackmar Bruson, MD (Our cemeterian)

Mary Blackmar attended Hillsdale College in rural southern Michigan in the late 1850s and graduated from Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia in 1866.

 

During the Civil War, while in medical school, she took a sabbatical and served in the Union Army. She was stationed at City Point in Virginia during the siege of Richmond.

After the war, she assisted for a year in a dispensary with the pioneer women doctors, sisters Mary and Elizabeth Blackwell in NYC

On March 5, 1870, this advertisement appeared in the "New Advertisements" of the Humboldt Times, a newspaper of Rohnerville, Humboldt County, in Northern California.  It Read:

Mary E. Blackmar, M.D.

Physician and Surgeon
Residence: Rohnerville
Will attend calls from other localities.

"We publish today the professional card of Mary E. Blackmar, MD who has her residence and office at Rohnerville. Miss Blackmar is a regular graduate of the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, and comes among us well recommended. We are authorized to state that it is her intention to attend at Eureka one or two days each week, and will be in town next Tuesday when anyone desiring will have an opportunity of consulting with her."

The ads ran for several months and then disappeared. I assume she was unhappy in her practice, her social life, or the climate because in 1871 she was back in the upper Midwest where she married a doctor in an established practice, William C Bruson. He died sometime after the 1880 census.

According to her friend, Adelaide W Smith, Mary moved to Florida due to poor health. In the Jacksonville Business Directories, 1888-93, she was listed as a physician. In the 1890 edition, her medical office was at 63 Newman Street. She lived in St. Nicholas and commuted to town by ferry.

IN TWO WEEKS - READ THE AMAZING LETTER WRITTEN BY DR. BRUSON TO A FRIEND IN JACKSONVILLE TELLING OF HER MEETING WITH PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND GENERAL GRANT AT THE HOSPITAL FOR CIVIL WAR CASUALTIES!