Pierson, Emily C.

Physician, teacher, suffragette, and world traveler.

Emily Pierson, a Connecticut native, was born in 1881 and died in 1971. Pierson graduated from Vassar (class of 1907) and received a Master's degree in English from Columbia University. After teaching high school and college English, she retired to become an activist in the Connecticut suffrage movement. Pierson studied medicine at Yale, after which she set up a practice that lasted for forty years. She also traveled extensively in Europe and the U.S.S.R. In the 1930s, Pierson began a decades-long friendship with Anna Louise Strong, visiting China twice as Strong's guest.