Clarke-Owen, Jane

Dr. Jane Clarke-Owen was born in 1854 in Warsaw, Indiana, where her mother, Dr. Marie Parks Furlong, practiced medicine. She married Thaddeus L. "Tom" Clarke in 1875 and had two daughters with him, Laura (b. 1877) and Therese (b. 1878). After divorcing her husband in 1884, she enrolled at Women's Medical College in Chicago. She studied there from 1885 to 1889. She lived apart from her daughters for much of her schooling and early career. After 1890, Clarke-Owen practiced medicine in Boston and elsewhere on the east coast. In order to support herself and her daughters, she also took on various odd jobs, including writing, working for Charles Hughes's presidential campaign, and operating a convalescent home. She was married briefly for a second time to a railroad worker named Ole Owen. She died in 1917.

Laura Clarke, Dr. Clarke-Owen's oldest daughter, lived on and off with her mother while she worked as a book canvasser, department store products demonstrator, and shop assistant in Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington D.C. Therese Clarke became an actress under the stage name Maguerite Urquhart and toured with various stock companies in the south and midwest. In 1904 she married a fellow actor, Will Dougherty, known on the stage as William H. Dupont, and converted to Roman Catholicism. She had two sons with Dougherty, Richard and Edwin, before their marriage ended.