The first couple of Forteanism. An update and extension on something I wrote in 2011 (!).
Miriam Allen deFord was born in 1888 to a pair of Philadelphia doctors, Moses deFord and Frances Allen. She was the oldest of three children. Her paternal grandfather had emigrated from France, and she remembers the Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood she grew up in as being mostly French. Moses made helped put himself through college and medical school teaching French classes, which is how he met Frances Allen—she was one of his students. Frances Allen descended from a long line of Philadelphia Quakers. They were engaged around 1883; Moses attended Jefferson Medical College (graduating 1886) and encouraged Frances’s interest in medicine. When he started his second year of school, she started her first at the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia (now part of Drexel University). She graduated in 1887, the year that they married.
Miriam Allen deFord was born in 1888 to a pair of Philadelphia doctors, Moses deFord and Frances Allen. She was the oldest of three children. Her paternal grandfather had emigrated from France, and she remembers the Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood she grew up in as being mostly French. Moses made helped put himself through college and medical school teaching French classes, which is how he met Frances Allen—she was one of his students. Frances Allen descended from a long line of Philadelphia Quakers. They were engaged around 1883; Moses attended Jefferson Medical College (graduating 1886) and encouraged Frances’s interest in medicine. When he started his second year of school, she started her first at the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia (now part of Drexel University). She graduated in 1887, the year that they married.