Ellen Lawson Dabbs

Mary Ellen Lawson Dabbs (April 25, 1853 – August 19, 1908) was a Texas physician, women's rights activist, and writer. Dabbs was an advocate of women's suffrage and of the temperance movement. Dabbs also believed that African American women deserved the right to vote in the same manner as white women.

Biography Dabbs was born in Rusk County in Texas, the only girl of 8 siblings. She grew up on a cotton plantation and was allowed to participate in activities normally reserved for men at the time. Her primary education was in Rusk County. When she was fourteen, she attended school in Gilmer. Then she attended the Furlow Masonic College in Georgia, where she was a valedictorian. When his sons were of age, her husband deeded over his property to them, and she decided she needed her own income. The Texas Health Journal states that she "has already met with great encouragement in her special line of work."

She became a writer for the National Economist, a newsletter of the National Farmers' Alliance. She also promoted age-of-consent legislation for Texas in 1894. Dabbs became involved in 1897 in promoting a bill which would establish a women's industrial school in Texas, which later became Texas Woman's University.

During the Spanish–American War, Dabbs volunteered as a "contract nurse" and served at Camp Cuba Libre in Jacksonville, Florida. However, her contract was annulled after six weeks for "unknown reasons." Dabbs contracted tuberculosis while at Camp Cuba Libre, where the hygiene conditions were poor. Her house in Fort Worth was destroyed by fire in 1899, though no one was injured; and Dabbs returned to Rusk County to practice medicine for some time.

Dabbs eventually moved to Oklahoma. She had traded her farm in Rusk County for a place to live in Waurika, where she continued to practice medicine, including delivering her first grandchild in March 1906. Her tuberculosis was getting worse, and so she moved to a ranch in northeast New Mexico for her health. In 1908, Dabbs knew that she was in an advanced stage of the disease and would face an "agonizing death by massive hemorrhaging." She saw each of her daughters and said goodbye, then took her own life on August 19, 1908, with chloroform. Her body was buried in Quay County, New Mexico in an anonymous grave for victims of tuberculosis.