activist physician suffragist teacher writer
Jennie C. McCowen was born on June 15, 1845, in Harveysburg, Ohio, United States. She was the second of five children of John and Maria (Taylor) McCowen. Jennie recalled her father as a "well-known physician," although he never practiced medicine as his primary occupation.
In Lebanon, Jennie McCowen entered normal college. She often declared that "thrown on her own resources" in 1861, she was compelled to teach school at age 16. In 1864 she left Ohio for Audubon County, Iowa, to live near her mother’s sister and to teach school.
In 1872 Jennie McCowen left teaching and matriculated at the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa), earning a medical degree in March 1876.
In 1871 Jennie McCowen became one of the first American women to run for elective office, losing the race for county school superintendent by just 15 votes. The following year, she left teaching and matriculated at the State University of Iowa. Professor Mark Ranney invited her to join the staff of the Iowa Hospital for the Insane at Mount Pleasant. Jennie McCowen was the third woman in the United States to serve in such a capacity. After almost three years at the hospital, Jennie McCowen returned to Ohio. An opportunity to enter private practice in Davenport drew her back to Iowa in 1880. There Jennie McCowen joined the Scott County Medical Society, which immediately elected her secretary.
The 1880s were a productive period in McCowen’s life. She published articles in medical journals, including "The Prevention of Insanity" in the Northwestern Lancet and "Insanity in Women" in Transactions of the Iowa State Medical Society. McCowen joined the Association for the Advancement of Women, a national organization that promoted women’s access to jobs, education, and public life. As vice president for Iowa, McCowen wrote a landmark report, "Women in Iowa," and later published a version in the State Historical Society of Iowa’s journal, the Annals of Iowa (1884). During that same period, Jennie McCowen contributed a regular column to a national suffrage paper, the Woman's Tribune, and represented Iowa annually at the National Conference of Charities and Correction. She also served two terms as president of the county medical society (probably the first American woman to hold such an office) and a term as president of the Davenport Academy of Science.
In the following years, Jennie McCowen owned the Hadlai Heights Women’s Hospital with her longtime companion, Eliza "Lile" Bickford.
In the 1890s and early 1900s, she gave greater attention to writing and organizing on behalf of women physicians. She helped found the Iowa State Society of Medical Women, serving as its president in 1893 and 1894, and joined the editorial staff of the Pan American Women’s Medical Journal. She edited and published in two-state medical journals and participated in national and international meetings on child welfare, insanity, public health, and geology.
In 1880 Jennie McCowen came back to Iowa, where she was affiliated with the Congregational church has left her mother’s Quaker faith.
Jennie McCowen was a Democrat.
As vice president for Iowa, Jennie McCowen wrote a landmark report, "Women in Iowa," and later published a version in the State Historical Society of Iowa’s journal, the Annals of Iowa (1884).
She also served two terms as president of the county medical society and a term as president of the Davenport Academy of Science.
Jennie McCowen was also active in the King’s Daughters, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Woman’s Relief Corps of the Grand Army of the Republic.
John was a Presbyterian widower from Maryland. In the late 1840s, John kept a store in Havana, Illinois. By 1859 John had returned to Ohio with his children: Jennie; her older brother, Israel; and her younger sisters, Mary, Susan, and Sarah (Maria had apparently died). Settling in Lebanon, John married Elizabeth Stokes and operated a drugstore.
Maria was an Ohio-born Quaker.
