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With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush
Dr. Nellie Pooler Chapman
My chair is a barrel cut in this wise, with a stick with headrest attached. The lower half of the barrel stuffed firmly with pine needles and covered with a strong potato sack over which I had an elegant cover of striped calico.” J. Foster Flagg Forty-Niner, Dentist.
A groan issued from the adjoining room. Drying her hands on a linen towel, the dentist drew in a deep breath and prepared herself for her patient. Smoothing the apron that covered her diminutive form, Nellie Pooler Chapman walked briskly toward the tray of tools and the lanky miner who waited, hand to jaw in a futile attempt to ease the pain.
With her husband Allen gone to the silver mines in Nevada, Nellie was fully prepared to handle the family dental practice. After all, she’d started learning dentistry immediately after her marriage at the age of fourteen.
Nellie Elizabeth Pooler was born in Norridgewock, Maine, on May 9, 1847. She was married to Dr. Allen Chapman, a bearded dentist of thirty-five, on March 24, 1861. The wedding took place in the home of John and Abigail Williams. This home was called “The Red Castle” because it was made of brick and decorated with white, icicle type wooden trim. Today it is a bed and breakfast inn and is still called the Red Castle.
To learn more about Nellie Pooler Chapman and dental practices
in the mid-1800s, read
With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush.
