Florida Historical Markers Programs - Marker Detail

Description: This low oolitic limestone building was the office and stable of Dr. Eleanor Galt Simmons (1854 – 1909), Dade County’s first female physician. Simmons, a Bryn Mawr College alumna, graduated from the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia in 1880. She moved to Coconut Grove in 1892 with her husband, Captain Albion Simmons, and purchased eight acres. Using the Encyclopedia Britannica as guidance, the couple built a house which later burned down. As a frontier physician, Simmons made her rounds by horse and a two-wheeled cart or by boat. She encountered alligators, rattlesnakes, panthers, and swarms of mosquitos. Simmons treated white and black settlers, as well as members of the Miccosukee tribe, made rural house calls, and became renowned for her ability to treat difficult cases. She also ministered to the 7,500 troops stationed in Miami during the Spanish-American War who suffered from dysentery, typhus, or measles. The property was sold to botanist Dr. David Fairchild and his wife in 1916 and is known as The Kampong. Dr. Simmons’ office is the second-oldest building in Miami-Dade County standing on its original foundation, and the brass doorbell plate at the entrance still bears her name, DR GALT SIMMONS.