Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Mary T. Bigelow, 1866-?
By Shelby Ingle, student, Colorado State University.
Dr. Mary Tower Bigelow was an influential Colorado suffragist. Bigelow was born in St. Charles, Minnesota, on April 16,1866, daughter of Myron and Lucretia Tower. The Tower family was well-versed in governmental work and established in their community in Chenango, New York. Her great-grandfather, born in Connecticut, worked in the United States government, cutting out a mail route across New York.
Outside of the prestige of her family, Bigelow was one of the most famous women doctors in the West, known for both her skilled practice and for her charitable volunteering with the Red Cross. Bigelow consistently provided urgent and necessary aid to those in need despite the frequent doctor protests in Colorado.
Dr. Mary Bigelow began her education in Thayer County, Nebraska. She then went off to college at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where she received a Bachelor's of Arts degree. However, after receiving this degree, medicine piqued her interest, and so she went on to pursue a degree in medicine from State University of Colorado. She also studied sociology in Oxford, England.
After college, she married Charles Wesley Bigelow on June 16, 1890, in Lincoln, Nebraska. Charles had equally impressive professional credentials. Dr. Charles Bigelow was at one point the President of the Union State Bank of Denver, as well as the director of the Merchants Bank of Denver. Outside of banking, Charles was known for his philanthropy, his role as an educator, and his short-lived career in farming. Mary and Charles had 4 children together: Maurice, Florence, Ruth, and Lucretia.
In addition to her practice in Colorado, Bigelow traveled between Munich and Paris. It was in Europe that she studied art under some of the greatest masters of her time, skills she later used to teach her own private classes.
Mary was also active in clubs, including the Colorado Branch of the American Alumni Association, the State Medical Society, the National Teachers Organization, a member of the Physicians and Surgeons of the Red Cross, the Denver Branch of the Congress of Mothers, the chairman of Denver's Free Milk Station for Babies, a member of the American League of Defense, and of the Westside Women's Club. Bigelow was also very involved politically. In November, 1917, Bigelow, a stalwart Republican, ran for the office of the House of Representatives and won in 1918, where she served for two years.
Sources
Stone, Wilbur F, ed. History of Colorado, Vol. 3. Denver, CO: S. J. Clarke, 1918. pp. 688-91.
Bradford, Mary Carroll Craig, & the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association. Equal Suffrage in Colorado from 1893 to 1908. Denver : Colorado Equal Suffrage Association, 1908.