Caroline Burnham Kilgore
American lawyer and suffragist (1838-1909)
Caroline Burnham Kilgore (January 20, 1838 – June 29, 1909) was the first woman to graduate from:
(A) a medical school and be granted an M.D. (in 1865) in New York State
and
(B) from University of Pennsylvania Law School and be admitted to the orphan's court bar (in 1881) in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. She became the first woman lawyer in Pennsylvania.
Early life
Caroline "Carrie" Burnham was born in Craftsbury, Vermont, in 1838. Her father, James Burnham, was a woolen manufacturer while her mother Eliza Arnold Burnham was a former teacher. She was orphaned at the age of 11. She attended the Craftsbury Common District School from the ages of 4 to 12.
She supported herself as a domestic worker and, starting in 1853, as a schoolteacher. While working as a teacher, Kilgore continued her education at Craftsbury Academy and Newbury Seminary.
Medical career
Kilgore moved to Wisconsin and taught grammar school and high school at Sun Prairie, Madison, and Evansville, where she was preceptor at the Evansville Seminary and Normal School. She moved to New York City in 1863 and enrolled in medical school at the Hygeio-Therapeutic College.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19864452. VIAF identifies the subject as 68266939. The Library of Congress control number is n99834175. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1838, 1909, 1865 and 1881.
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This entry incorporates text from “Caroline Burnham Kilgore” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.