Education
University of Oregon.
University of Oregon.
In 1907, Lovejoy became the first woman appointed to direct a department of health in a major United States city, the Portland Board of Health, Oregon. Lovejoy worked on the women"s suffrage campaigns in Oregon in 1906 and 1912, and founded the Everybody"s Equal Suffrage League ahead of the 1912 election, when Oregon became the 7th state to grant women the right to vote. Lovejoy was among the founders of the Medical Women"s International Association and was elected as its first president in 1919.
Lovejoy ran for the United States. Congress in 1920 as the Democratic candidate for Portland’s Third District but was not successful against the sitting Republican.
She was awarded the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal by the American Medical Women"s Association in 1951 and 1957 for contributions to the field of medicine. Esther Pohl Lovejoy was born Esther Clayson in a lumber camp near Seabeck, Washington, and received almost no formal early education.
Despite this, she became only the second woman to graduate from University of Oregon"s medical school (1894). The Pohls had one son, Frederick, born in 1901, who died in 1908 from septic peritonitis.
Following her son"s death, Esther pursued further training in Berlin in 1909.
Her husband Emil died in Alaska in 1911. Subsequently, Esther married Portland businessman George A. Lovejoy in 1912, divorcing in 1920.