Martha Hughes Cannon

Women in Science » Medicine

Pioneer, doctor, prominent suffragist, author of Utah’s sanitation laws, initiator and first member of the State Board of Health, founder of first nursing school in Utah Territory, and the first woman in the United States elected as a state senator. Raised in Salt Lake City, Cannon attended medical school at the University of Michigan before returning to Utah to serve as resident physician for the newly founded Deseret Hospital. Later, Cannon became involved in the national women’s suffrage movement and traveled to Washington, D.C., to speak to a congressional committee in favor of granting women the right to vote. In 1896, Cannon became the first woman in the United States elected as state senator, and she served two terms during which she spearheaded funding for speech- and hearing-impaired students, the establishment of a state board of health, and a law regulating the working conditions of women and girls.
Image courtesy of Church History Collections, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Intellectual Reserves, Inc.