Mary Ritter Beard was born in New York City in 1846, the daughter of William H. and Margaret (Fowler) Beard. She attended school at home until age fifteen when her father sent her to Miss Converse's School for Young Ladies in New York City. She later enrolled at the Pratt Institute where she studied under Professor William Morris Hunt
Beard received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 1866 and studied medicine at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, receiving her degree in 1869. Upon returning to New York, Beard married John T. Wilson, a prominent banker and businessman.
They had two sons together before divorcing in 1902. Beard went on to practice medicine for forty-one years, first as an intern at Bellevue Hospital and later as the attending physician of the New York State Hospital for Women and Children at Harlem, where she died in 1939. Since her death, Beard has been recognized as one of America's most important early advocates for women's rights.
Unless one's philosophy is all-inclusive nothing can be understood.Mary Ritter Beard
Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.Mary Ritter Beard
Wherever we go, across the Pacific or Atlantic, we meet, not similarity so much as 'the bizarre'. Things astonish us, when we travel, that surprise nobody else.Mary Ritter Beard
