Have you ever been to Bozeman, Montana? If you haven’t, you need to put it on your bucket list and go to the Museum of the Rockies there. It is located at Montana State University and is a Smithsonian Affiliate, recognized as one of the world's finest research and history museums. It is renowned for displaying an extensive collection of dinosaur fossils, including a T. rex skeleton! MOR delights visitors with changing exhibits from around the world, permanent indoor and outdoor regional history exhibits, planetarium shows, educational programs, insightful lectures, benefit events, and a museum store. (This information taken from its website.)
It all started back in the early 1900s by a female doctor named Caroline McGill. She was described in the book “Woman Of Distinction” by Mary Redfield Lindsey in this way: “...a petite sparkling individualist - erudite, Irish wit, courtly manners and earthy frontier folkways all combined in 118 pounds and five feet, one and a half inches of mingled dignity and humor.”
She was indeed a “woman of distinction”. When she was only 17, she received a lifetime teaching certificate to teach grade school. She entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in 1901 and one year later she received a teaching assistantship there in zoology. She continued to teach while pursuing her education, supplementing her teaching salary by chopping wood and doing housekeeping, and living in a little rented room in the attic over the second story of an old house on Eighth Street in Columbia.
In 1904 she received her B.A. degree at MU, followed by her Master of Arts degree one year later. In 1908 at the age of 29 she received her PhD in Anatomy and Physiology with Phi Beta Cappa Key, being the first woman to receive a PhD from MU.
In the summer of 1908 she took a course in pathology at the University of Chicago and in the summer of 1909 she did research in microscopic anatomy at Woods Hole, Mass. During that year she became the first recipient of the Sarah Berliner Fellowship which was worth $1200 and allowed her to study anywhere in the U.S. or Europe.
In September of 1909 she arrived in Europe by steamer and travelled through Ireland, England and Scotland before beginning research in laboratories in Germany and Italy. She did research on Microscopic Anatomy at University of Berlin then went to Naples to study at the Zoological Institute there. While there she received an offer to take the position of Pathologist at Murray Hospital in Butte, Montana. She was also offered a full professorship at MU but declined it in order to accept the position as Montana’s first pathologist.
I have used up my allotment of words in this column but I will be writing a second column because I want you to get to know Dr. Caroline McGill as a person aside from all her academic achievements.
Oh, did I tell you that Caroline McGill grew up in Laclede County and went through her first eight grades of school at Kapp School here? And after receiving her teaching certificate at Kapp, she taught in the District Schools at Mayfield and Mullicane for six months of the years 1897 and 1898 then attended Lebanon Normal School three months of the year, and after graduation there in 1900 she enrolled in the University of Missouri in 1901.
And remember my story in last week’s column about walking home from Kapp School with my cousin and spending the night in her house on what is now Hemlock Road? Well, that house where I often spent the night with my cousin is the house in which Caroline and her siblings grew up and those of us who are researching this story believe that house, which was originally a log house, was possibly built by Caroline’s father, Samuel McGill.
I wanted to wait until the end of my columns on Dr. McGill to reveal this “rest of the story” to you but I was afraid I might die in the meantime and I sure wanted you, as citizens of Laclede County, and those of you who are alumni of Kapp School, to know this part of her fantastic life. Dave Berg and Donnie Raef have given me much assistance on research for these columns. Donnie used the Draper Family genealogy papers because there is a connection between the McGill family and the Drapers, and also a connection between the Berg family and the McGill family.
© Joan Rowden Hart 2017
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