Partner Martha Tracy
Queer Places:
Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 627 Arch St, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA
Bryn Mawr College (Seven Sisters), 101 N Merion Ave, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Cedar Grove Cemetery, 638 Broad St, New London, CT 06320, United States
Ellen Culver Potter (August 5, 1871 - February 9, 1958) was born on August 5, 1871, in New London, Connecticut, the daughter of Thomas Wells Potter and
Ellen Harris Culver Potter. Growing up with her siblings, she initially pursued studies in art as a young woman in Boston, New York City, and Europe. Her
early path also included impactful community work, which involved working at a settlement house in Chinatown and founding a settlement house in Norwich,
Connecticut. Transitioning into medicine, she graduated with her M.D. from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania on May 20, 1903, and subsequently
served as an officer in the school's alumnae association.
Professionally, Dr. Potter built a distinguished career as a pioneering physician, academic, and public health official. She taught gynecology courses
at her alma mater, acted as medical director of the school's hospital, and also taught social hygiene at Bryn Mawr College. In public health and
education, she worked as a medical inspector in the Philadelphia school system, headed the Division of Child Health for Pennsylvania, and served as head
of the state's Bureau of Children from 1921 to 1923. In 1923, Governor Gifford Pinchot appointed her as Pennsylvania's Secretary of Welfare, making her
the first American woman to hold a secretary position in a state governor's cabinet, where she oversaw public childcare, state hospitals, and county
jails until 1927.
Moving to New Jersey, she held numerous vital leadership roles, including medical director of the New Jersey Training School, medical director of the
State Department of Institutions and Agencies, and deputy welfare commissioner, alongside serving as superintendent of the Woman’s Reformatory and State
Home for Girls and president of the New Jersey Welfare Council. Nationally, she served as president of the American Medical Women's Association, sat on
the President’s Commission on Social Security, and consulted for the Wickersham Commission. She was a fellow of the American College of Physicians and
the American Public Health Association, active in the League of Women Voters and the YWCA, and testified before Congress on maternal health and medical
staff shortages. Recognized widely for her contributions, she received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Rutgers College, won the W. S. Terry
Memorial Award, and served as acting president of the Woman's Medical College from 1941 to 1943.
In her personal life, Dr. Potter shared a lifelong, inseparable domestic and professional partnership with Dr.
Martha Tracy, the dean of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. The two met at the college at the start
of the twentieth century, lived and worked together, and spent their summers running a 370-acre camp in the Adirondacks until Tracy’s death in 1942. Dr.
Potter passed away on February 8, 1958, at the age of 86 at the Woman's Medical College Hospital in Philadelphia. She was buried at Cedar Grove Cemetery
in New London, Connecticut, and her archival papers are preserved at the Drexel University College of Medicine.
References:
Other references:
- Charles Edward Potter, Genealogies of the Potter Families and Their Descendants in America to the Present Generation: With Historical and Biographical Sketches (A. Mudge & Son, 1888).
- William Starr Myers, Prominent Families of New Jersey (Genealogical Publishing Company, 2000).
- Janet Miller, "Potter, Ellen Culver (1871–1958), physician, public health administrator, and welfare reformer," American National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2000).
- Margaret Steel Moss, "Ellen C. Potter, M.D., F.A.C.P.," Public Administration Review, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1941): 351–362.
- John William Leonard, Woman's Who's Who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada (American Commonwealth Company, 1914).
- The Ellen Culver Potter Papers ([1903–1953]), housed at The Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections at Drexel University College of Medicine (her alma mater, formerly the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania).
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