Isabel Barrows

(Katherine) Isabel Hayes Chapin Barrows (April 17, 1845 – October 24, 1913) was the first woman employed by the United States State Department. She worked as a stenographer for William H. Seward in 1868 while her husband, Samuel June Barrows, was ill. She later became the first woman to work for Congress as a stenographer. Barrows was also one of the first women to attend the University of Vienna to study ophthalmology, the first American woman in medical practice as an ophthalmologist, and the first woman to have a private practice in medicine in Washington, D.C.

Early life and initial education Born to Scottish immigrants, Anna Gibb and Henry Hayes on April 17, 1845, in Irasburg, Vermont, Katherine Isabel Hayes was the fifth of seven children. After graduation from Adams Academy, she married William Wilberforce Chapin in Derry on September 26, 1863.

First marriage and early missionary work In 1863, when she was 18, she accompanied her husband William Chapin to India where they worked as missionaries William Wilberforce Chapin

Second marriage Starting up a life on her own, she moved to Dansville, New York, and became a bath assistant at a water-cure sanatorium. At the sanatorium she was trained in hydropathy and incidentally, met the man who was to become her second husband, Samuel June Barrows. On June 28, 1867, Isabel Chapin and Samuel Barrows were married in Brooklyn by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Even abroad she held some semblance of authority.

1900 marked a change in Isabel's life. She began writing articles and books with her husband about prison reform and the treatment of the feeble-minded. Her membership in the Women's Committee to Inspect Women's Institutions, gave her a place of authority in the debate over the prison statement. As a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), she joined NAWSA president Anna Howard Shaw and other suffragists in March 1908 to urge the U.S. Senate to move forward with the constitutional amendment for women's right to vote. Her speech before the Senate's Committee on Woman Suffrage referenced her recent visit to Finland where women already had the right to vote.

Her activism was not limited to the boundaries of the United States. In 1909 she went to Saint Petersburg, Russia, in order to petition for the release of Catherine Breshkovsky, who was being held as a Russian revolutionary. While she was overseas, Samuel died. After briefly returning to New York for the funeral, Isabel returned to Russia to continue pleading for Catherine Breshkovsky's release. Following this effort abroad she took Samuel's place at the International Prison Congress in Paris.

Death Isabel Barrows continued her work vying for reform, primarily in prisons, and on other issues, both national and international. Writing novels, newspaper articles, and speeches, her influence was enormous in both social and political scenes. Isabel died of cirrhosis on October 25, 1913, in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.