The Friends of the Hyde Park Branch Library have started raising funds for a gravestone for Rebecca Lee Crumpler, who graduated from the New England Female Medical College in Boston in 1864 and whose body currently lies in an unmarked grave in Fairview Cemetery in Hyde Park.
The Friends are hoping to raise between $3,000 and $5,000 for a tombstone for Crumpler. They've collected some info on Crumpler, of whom no known image survives: Born in Delaware in 1831, she grew up in Pennsylvania, but she eventually moved to the Boston area, where she took classes at West Newton English and Classical School and settled in Charlestown. In 1864, she earned her medical degree. After serving time following the Civil War with the Freedmen's Bureau in Richmond, VA, she moved back to the Boston area with her husband, Arthur, and eventually settled in Hyde Park - near the cemetery where she is now buried.
In 1883, she write a book of medical advice for "mothers, nurses, and all who may desire to mitigate the afflictions of the human race," A Book of Medical Discourses in Two Parts.
Donations towards a tombstone can be made to:
Friends of the Hyde Park LibraryFor: Crumpler Fund35 Harvard Avenue, Hyde Park, MA 02136
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The first African-American woman to graduate from medical school in the US is buried in an unmarked grave in Hyde Park - Universal Hub
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