Sophia Jones was one of six children in the family of James Monroe (Gunsmith) & Emily Jones.  Sophia, was born in Chatham in 1857 and entered the University of Toronto in 1879 with the desire to study medicine.  However, women were not allowed at the time to pursue a medical career, so after graduation she taught school for several years in Canada and then went to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and attended the University of Michigan, graduating as the first black female doctor in 1885.  During her medical career she was a resident doctor at Oberlin College in Xenia, Ohio. (7)  Her greatest medical accomplishment was starting the first nurses' training class at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.  She practiced medicine in St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Kansas City.  When her health began to fail, she migrated to California to live with family members.  Here she lived another 15 years after giving her life to the care of others and during the last morning of her life she stated, "I was in hopes that I would awake in another country this morning." (8)

Reference:

(1) Copy of Manumission papers, Seek The Truth, G. Robinson

(2) Oberlin Alumni Magazine 57, No. 4, James Monroe Jones papers, April 30, 1872

(3) Provincial Freedman-November 25, 1854

(4) What About Pistols?-Chatham Daily Planet, September 29, 1860

(5) Chatham Directory, Chatham Library

(6) Death Certificate, Washtenaw County, Michigan, November 7, 1905, Record # 38

(7&8) N.A.A.C.P. Crisis Magazine Article - Dec. 1932 and picture of Dr. Sophia Jones

Others: 

Chatham Daily News - November 8, 1905

News article from American Newspaper received from Reneé Cocheé - Great, great, great granddaughter of James Monroe Jones.

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