A groundbreaker on several fronts, Dr. Barrows was born in Irasburg, VT, and educated in Derry, NH, where she married William Chapin in 1863. They traveled to India to work as missionaries. William died soon after their arrival, leaving Isabel a nineteen-year-old widow. She remained in India, serving as a teacher at a school for girls before returning the U.S. Isabel remarried in 1867. Dr. Barrows’ second husband, Samuel Barrows, obtained employment in Washington D.C. as an assistant to Secretary of State William Seward. When Samuel became ill, she filled in for him becoming the first woman to work as a stenographer for the State Department. Dr. Barrows later enrolled at the Woman’s Medical College in New York, earning a degree in medicine. The Barrows traveled to Europe, where Isabel studied ophthalmology at the University of Vienna, another first. Upon their return to Washington, Dr. Barrows opened a private medical practice becoming the first woman to do so. The couple became active in prison reform and other religious and charitable causes. They settled in Dorchester after Samuel entered Harvard Divinity School and was named pastor of the Unitarian Church at Meeting House Hill. As a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Isabel testified before Congress in 1908 in support of the 19th Amendment along with Anna Howard Shaw, president of the organization. After Samuel’s death in 1909, she continued to write and remain active in reform movements until her death in 1913.
