Isabelle Godfrey

In an article in the Baltimore SUN in December of 1906, it was announced that Dr. Isabella K. Godfrey was giving up her medical practice. Luckily for us, it also provided some biographical information.

Dr. Godfrey graduated with honors from the Woman’s Medical College, and for several years, assisted the College’s Dr. Thomas Ashby as his chief of clinic, and as a demonstrator of anatomy. She also had a successful private practice, which she had also given up, or as the article put it, “resumed her place in social circles after several years devoted to the study and practice of medicine.”

During the years prior to retiring from medicine, there were numerous mentions of Dr. Godfrey spending time at Blue Ridge Summit in Pennsylvania, a place where many of Baltimore’s social set spent the summers. She also visits Atlantic City and New York City, often for a month at a time, with her widowed sister, Mrs. Kennon Jones, who lived with her at 1431 Park Avenue in Bolton Hill.

The article talks about her being a musician, singing in the choir at Grace Protestant Episcopal Church, and being an expert swimmer and oarswoman, including winning a prize at a contest in Greenwood Park. She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the War of 1812.

In the opening paragraph of the 1906 article, it says that it’s interesting to see someone to retire from a career to “take their place in the circle of women of leisure.” Dr. Isabella Kennedy Godfrey died of heart failure at her home in 1923.