Isabel Barrows

Isabel C. Barrows was the first woman employed by the United States State Department. She worked as a stenographer for William H. Seward in 1868 while her husband, Samuel June Barrows, was ill. [cite book
url= http://books.google.com/books?id=DrYoyAM3PBYC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=isabel+barrows&source=web&ots=wreyo9Xck8&sig=eJohTgVabyZUHxiskPnCkzDCp8M#PPA16,M1
title= The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response
author= Peter Balakian
quote= By virtue of her talent at the new "science" of stenography, she was called on in 1868 to fill in for her ill husband, June, then secretary to William Seward, President Andrew Johnson's Secretary of State...] She later became the first woman to work for Congress as a stenographer. [cite web
url= http://www.ou.edu/special/albertctr/extensions/spring2000/gender.html
accessdate= 2007-12-19
title= Gender Images of Congressional Life from Behind the Typewriter
author= Bryan Pepper
coauthors= Misty Wetmore] Barrows was also one of the first women to attend the University of Vienna to study ophthalmology, and the first woman to have a private practice in medicine in Washington, D.C.. Isabel Barrows died at the age of 68 in 1913.

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