Local History: Female Doctor Ran S.O. Sanitarium 100 Years Ago

In 2009, a recent medical school graduate is just as likely to be female as male, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges. In 1870, however, according to the National Institute of Health, there were 525 female doctors in the whole country. The number grew slowly, and women doctors were in the minority until late in the last century.

On that score alone, it’s notable that South Orange’s Calista Vinton Luther, born only nine years before Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman in the country to graduate from medical school, became a doctor. Luther’s story is even more remarkable, though decades of it are lost to history.

A blue book of South Orange’s most prominent citizens, dated 1908, lists Dr. Calista V. Luther at 151 Scotland Ave. This struck me both because of her title and because she is one of the few women listed by that given name. According to the tradition of the time, that suggested that Luther was a widow.

Still intrigued, I pursued Dr. Luther through the archives. I learned from 1907 obituaries in The New York Times that Luther ran a “private sanitarium” on Scotland Avenue, and that her specialty was psychiatry. A 1903 article, in which her name was misspelled as “Salista,” confirmed my suspicions about her widowhood. Entitled “Prof R. M. Luther Drops Dead,” The New York Times article reports that “The Rev. Dr. Robert Morris Luther, Professor of Church History at the Amity Theological School” in Manhattan died suddenly on the ferry boat Secaucus, in transit from Hoboken to Christopher Street.

The victim’s wife is described as living in Seabrook, while the Rev. Luther’s address was given as 154 Scotland Rd. (This seems to be an error.) The couple had two daughters, Edith and Agnes; according to The New York Times, one lived in a hotel.

Previous citations for the Rev. Dr. include, "Reasons for existence. The annual discourse,” delivered at the 72nd annual meeting of the American Colonization Society, in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 13, 1889. In his address, Luther referred to his own upbringing in Africa. With that in mind, I continued to dig deeper into Dr. Calista Luther’s past. In 1880, she wrote the story of her parents’ shared career, which revealed a great deal about her own life, especially her own years living in Asia.

Calista Vinton was born in 1841 in Burma, spelled “Burmah” in the manuscript, to Baptist missionaries. Her parents studied the Karen language and culture, and began preaching and establishing schools in very remote mountainous regions. She, her brother (another died as a toddler), and parents were witness to the Second Anglo-Burmese War. (I infer that they sided with the British, since they later spent a furlough in England with the Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces during the Second Anglo-Burmese War.) Calista Vinton and her brother were home-schooled by their mother until 1854, when they were sent to the U.S. for schooling. Calista Vinton attended high school in Sheffield, Conn.

In 1858, when her father died, Calista Vinton returned to Burma to help her mother run the mission. In the U.S., Vinton had met Robert M. Luther, a recent graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and they married in 1862.

The Luthers worked as missionaries in Burma until 1872. When they returned to the U.S., the Rev. Dr. worked for the Baptist Missionary Union and led a congregation in Newark. It seems likely that they arrived in South Orange at this time. Calista Vinton Luther, by all accounts, became a physician, and published the account of her parents’ life in Burma in 1880. I found two 1900 mentions of Dr. Luther, one in The New York Times, where she is described as trying – and failing for a lack of a quorum – to organize New Jersey’s female doctors into an association. In the same year, she reported to the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane on conditions of female doctors in the field. Reported in the notes of Psychiatric News, Luther explained, “The women did not stay long  [in psychiatric hospitals] because professional advancement was blocked, salaries were often lower than those of men, and women were denied authority. Many left to enter private practice.”

The 1908 blue book listing for Dr. Luther suggests that both daughters lived with her at 151 Scotland Ave. From there, the trail peters out. Records from the Cypress Cemetery in Old Saybrook, Conn., list Robert M. Luther, her husband; daughter Edith, born 1865 and dead in 1928; and Calista Luther, born in 1841 and dead in 1924. No other information is offered.

I remain intrigued by Calista Vinton Luther because in an era when women doctors and psychiatrists were rare, she was both. From what I can tell, she attended medical school after her children were born, a rarity at that time. She was a working mother, who ran a business from home, and wrote a book. No wonder; her upbringing in rural Burma prepared her for many challenges. Outliving her two brothers, parents and husband, Calista Vinton Luther ran a sanitarium on Scotland Road into the 1900s.

The site of the sanitarium is all that remains; the homes there are new by South Orange standards. Records of the sanitarium are few, as are details of Luther’s life. I regret this, as she’s a 19th century woman who might feel right at home in South Orange, 2009.