May Farinholt Jones

Born in Virginia in 1866, May Farinholt Jones trained at the Woman's Medical College of Baltimore, graduating in 1897. Historical sources describe her as one of Mississippi's earliest licensed women physicians, and as the first woman physician at what was then the Mississippi State College for Women.

She built a remarkable medical career in Mississippi, where she was also the first woman admitted to the Mississippi State Medical Association and the first woman to take the state medical board examination there. Records also place her at Tom Franklin Hospital and later identify her as a professor of hygiene and sanitation and resident physician at Mississippi Normal College.

Jones is best remembered by many readers for Keep-Well Stories for Little Folks (1916), a children's book that used imaginative storytelling to teach healthy habits. She died in West Point, Virginia, on September 10, 1940.