Edith (Hewett) White (1856 - 1901)

Born 1856 in Iowa, United States

Ancestors

Died 1901 at about age 45 in Alaska, United States

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Biography

Edith was born in 1856. She was the daughter of Alonzo Hewett and Catherine Knowlton. She passed away in 1901.

Sources

• The book "The Hewetts: An American Saga in the Age of Vaudeville, Circuses, and Bands

By Avrel Seale c 2024" contains copious documentation. https://www.lulu.com/shop/avrel-seale/the-hewetts-an-american-saga-in-the-age-of-vaudeville-circuses-and-bands/paperback/product-m24y26w.html?page=1&pageSize=4

From p. 85: Edith Hewett, Alonzo and Kate’s second born, made quite the splash everywhere she went.

She was exceedingly beautiful.

Edith’s classmates remember her as a “tall, strikingly handsome woman filled with a restless ambition” and a “good dresser and very fascinating to both men and women.” “A tall, dashing brunette with beautiful eyes, perfect teeth and a charming manner,” another description ran. “Her costumes were always very striking, being rather after the style of the other sex,” her favorite outfit including vest-pattern waist and jaunty hat in addition to a dress with a white skirt front and standing collar. “She invariably carried a cane, and her fine figure and vigorous graceful movements attracted attention to her on all sides.” And again, “Those who knew her say that she is a remarkably fascinating woman. She is a tall, dashing brunette, with beautiful eyes, model teeth, and winning ways. She was what is known in theatrical parlance as ‘a great dresser.’ From the fact that she was exercising the masculine prerogative of extracting teeth, Mrs. Dr. White adopted a mannish attire.”

In 1878, Edith, then twenty-two, married John H. White, a traveling salesman from Minneapolis and later a collector for the Minneapolis Harvester works. In Minneapolis, they had four children, two daughters and two sons, but both sons died in infancy.

Shortly after her second baby died, “family dissensions” caused Edith and John to separate. Four years later, when Edith filed for divorce, she claimed that John had deserted her in 1887. At this time one of her daughters, Vera, was living in a convent in Minneapolis, and the other, Alice, known as “Blossom,” was living with her grandparents, Alonzo and Kate, near Lake Charles, Louisiana. Edith tried to initiate divorce proceedings and went to Manistee, Michigan, to avoid publicity in Minneapolis, where she was so well known. Apparently, she could not get the divorce then.

Edith returned to Minneapolis and in 1887, began attending the University of Minnesota School of Medicine, living in a boarding house on 6th Street South. (Her estranged husband was living just blocks away at 8th Street South.) A yearbook photo of Edith posing with her sword in the Golden Gopher Fencing Club can still be seen in the college’s history brochure, though the author has reservations this is her based on the other two known photos. In 1890, she became the first woman to graduate with a dentistry degree. “She soon became very deft in jerking teeth and a short time ago engaged rooms in the Syndicate block and hung out a full-fledged dentist card,” wrote the Minneapolis Daily Times.

Edith in “jaunty hat” with fellow students and faculty from the Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota, circa 1889. Photo provided to UMinn by her grandson, G. F. Weber, Jr.

In addition to remembering Edith as a tall, strikingly handsome woman, her classmates also said, “Her domestic troubles were mainly caused by her desire to win a name and fame in the world.” Those problems came to light in early February 1891 in a story so sensational that it appeared on the front pages of newspapers across the country.

But first, in the fall of 1890, at age thirty-four, Edith suffered a stroke resulting in “paralysis of the right side.” Perhaps the cane, then, was not merely a fashion statement. “Since then she has been unable to stand on her feet for any length of time,” said Edith’s assistant, Jennie Napier, whom the paper called “a handsome young mulatto girl.” Given her exploits over the next decade, we can only assume that either the stroke was mild (a mini-stroke) or else she made a remarkable recovery."

This is only a brief excerpt; the book has much more.