Harriot Kezia Hunt

Harriot Kezia Hunt (November 9, 1805 – January 2, 1875) was an American medical doctor and women's rights activist. She spoke at the first National Women's Rights Conventions, held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Early life Hunt was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1805, the daughter of Joab Hunt and Kezia Wentworth Hunt. She was educated at home by her parents. Hunt's father died in 1827, leaving the family without financial support. Harriot Hunt and her sister, Sarah Hunt, opened a private school in their home in order to be self-sufficient. In 1835 Hunt opened her own consulting room, without a medical diploma. as well as the university overseers and other faculty members, and she was asked to withdraw her application. Shortly after Elizabeth Blackwell's graduation from Geneva College in 1849, Hunt applied to Harvard again, but was denied. Despite not being accepted to Harvard after her second application, Hunt continued to practice medicine on her own. She became so widely known that in 1853 she received an Honorary Doctor of Medicine from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. However, Hunt believed that femininity made women especially suited for the medical profession. As she asked, "What could be more delicately feminine, more truly womanly, than to take the hand of a sister, afflicted in body and mind, and to show her the cause of her diseases?"

Hunt was a vocal advocate for the right of women to both learn and practice medicine and, more generally, to be educated and seek professions. She believed she was living in an "age of transition," as she called it, where people were beginning to question societal traditions. In 1850, she attended the National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. For a number of years, Hunt spent her time lecturing on the abolition of slavery as well as women's rights.

Death and legacy Hygeia, the Greek goddess of health, carved by Edmonia Lewis c. 1871-1872 for Harriot Hunt's grave Hunt died in Boston on January 2, 1875, at the age of 69. She was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, near Boston. Her grave is marked by a statue of the Greek goddess of health, Hygeia, carved by the African American sculptor Edmonia Lewis.

The first volume of History of Woman Suffrage, published in 1881, states, “THESE VOLUMES ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO THE Memory of Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Martineau, Lydia Maria Child, Margaret Fuller, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, Josephine S. Griffing, Martha C. Wright, Harriot K. Hunt, M.D., Mariana W. Johnson, Alice and Phebe Carey, Ann Preston, M.D., Lydia Mott, Eliza W. Farnham, Lydia F. Fowler, M.D., Paulina Wright Davis, Whose Earnest Lives and Fearless Words, in Demanding Political Rights for Women, have been, in the Preparation of these Pages, a Constant Inspiration TO The Editors”.

Hunt is commemorated on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail, and on a plaque on the left wall of Paul Revere Mall.

She is also the namesake of the Women's Pro Baseball League team the Boston Hunters.