Isabel "Belle" Cobb (October 25, 1858 – August 11, 1947) was a Cherokee woman, physician and educator. Cobb is best known for being the first woman physician in Indian Territory. Early life and education Cobb was born near Morgantown, Tennessee and was the oldest of seven children of Joseph Benson and Evaline Clingman Cobb. She attended school in Cleveland, Tennessee until 1870, when at the age of 12, her family moved to Cooweescoowee District of the Cherokee Nation (near modern day Wagoner, Oklahoma). Cobb was a good student, winning awards while attending school in Tennessee. This furthered her hunger for education and laid the groundwork for her ability to excel in future studies after her family moved to Indian Territory. Shortly after arriving in the Cherokee Nation, her mother gave birth to Cobb's youngest sister. It was a very difficult delivery. The family had to call for a midwife because there were no doctors in the area at the time. Although her mother survived the delivery, it left a lasting impression on the young woman and became her motivation that would propel her into her career. There was a limited choice of schools in the Indian Territory at the time so Cobb enrolled in the Cherokee Female Seminary in Tahlequah, Oklahoma where she graduated in 1879. She continued her education at Glendale Female College in Glendale, Ohio where she graduated in 1881. At this point in her life, Cobb had received more education than most women of her day. Cobb returned to Indian Territory to teach at the Seminary from 1882 until it was destroyed by fire in 1887. She never forgot the lesson she learned from watching her mother struggle during childbirth and the need for doctors in her district; so she left the territory again and enrolled in the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1888. It was only the second institution in the world, at that time, to offer women a M.D. degree. Cobb earned her M.D. degree in 1892. Career After Cobb spent six months in an internship in New York at Staten Island Nursery and Child's hospital, she again returned home, in 1893, to begin her practice of medicine in the rural areas of Wagoner County. She worked out of a farmhouse on her family's homestead, barely seeing two hundred patients per year. She focused primarily on women and children. "Dr. Belle" as she was