Born on March 14, 1833, probably in Franklin County, New York, Lucy Hobbs graduated from the Franklin Academy in Malone, New York, in 1849 and became a schoolteacher. While teaching in Brooklyn, Michigan, she began the study of medicine, and in 1859 she moved to Cincinnati, where, after being refused admission to the Eclectic College of Medicine because of her sex, she studied privately under one of the school╒s professors. At his suggestion she turned to dentistry.
She studied privately under the dean of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery and subsequently apprenticed herself to a practicing graduate of the school. Refused admission to the dental college because she was a woman, she opened a practice in Cincinnati in the spring of 1861. She practiced in Bellevue, Iowa, in 1862 and in McGregor, Iowa, in 1862╨1865. In July 1865 she was elected to membership in the Iowa State Dental Society and sent as a delegate to the American Dental Association convention in Chicago. In November 1865 she was admitted to the senior class of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery, and on her graduation in February 1866 she became the first American woman to receive a dental degree. While practicing in Chicago she married James M. Taylor in April 1867; under his wife╒s instruction he too became a dentist. Late in 1867 they moved to Lawrence, Kansas, where they enjoyed a large practice. She largely retired after her husband╒s death in 1886. She died in Lawrence, Kansas, on October 3, 1910.
