Sophia Presley became one of the first women to establish a longstanding medical practice in Camden the early 1880s. For nearly three decades while maintaining her private practice, she also treated patients in charitable institutions and helped lead a movement to create public parks in Camden. She broke a barrier by overcoming the resistance of male colleagues to be admitted to membership in the Camden County Medical Society.

Born in Ireland around 1838, Presley immigrated to the United States at the age of 11. She arrived in New York in 1849 with her parents and two siblings, part of the wave of Irish immigrants who escaped the potato famine in Ireland. They settled in Ohio, where her father found work in a glass factory.

After her mother died in 1856, Presley gained an education at the Granville (Ohio) Female Seminary. She then earned a living as a teacher in private academies in Ohio and Indiana, but by 1876 a desire to study medicine brought her east to Philadelphia. She enrolled at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and graduated with the class of 1879.

Presley became an instructor of surgery at Woman’s Medical College while joining the staff of the Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia. While holding those positions, by 1880 she moved to Camden to fill a need for a female physician.  (The city briefly had another female physician, Hettie K. Painter, in the early 1860s, but she left during the Civil War to care for wounded soldiers and did not return. Another female doctor, Anna E. Griffith, arrived in Camden around the same time as Presley and established her practice on Fourth Street.)

Fellow doctors in Camden later recalled that Presley encountered “strong prejudice in employing a female physician, yet by her earnest zeal and ability she soon had the confidence of many of our prominent families and secured a large clientele under adverse circumstances.” She also had to overcome prejudices within the all-male Camden County Medical Society, which rejected her application for membership annually beginning in 1883. Finally, a unanimous endorsement by Camden city physicians pushed the county society to relent and accept her in 1890.

During her years of private practice, Presley also served as a physician for African American children at the West Jersey Orphanage, for aged patients at the Methodist Episcopal Home, and for indigent patients at the Camden Dispensary. She reported on cases and treatments in medical papers and spoke to local organizations on topics like emergency medicine and child care. During the 1890s, she was among the leaders of the Women’s Parks Association, where she argued for the health benefits of public parks.

Presley moved frequently as she rented rooms for her home and office. She lived and worked on Cooper Street twice, in 1885 at 302 Cooper Street (still standing, privately owned) and for seven years, from 1889-96, at 405 Cooper Street (now the home of the Rutgers—Camden Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice). She also lived at several other addresses within the current footprint of the Rutgers—Camden campus on North Third Street, North Fourth Street, and Penn Street. In her later years, she purchased a home at 333 N. Seventh Street, which was later demolished for construction of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

Sophia Presley died from heart disease in 1909. By that time, Camden had four female physicians to serve as honorary pallbearers as she was buried in Harleigh Cemetery.