Springs sheriff and district clerk not to notify her of the hearing which resulted in a dismissed divorce case. Dabbs had to resort to representing herself as a widow and carried on as a single working mother in Sulphur Springs, setting up a practice there. In Sulphur Springs, she "acquired an interest in a newspaper." Dabbs was inspired by the "inequitable results" of her divorce to work towards women's rights. She sold her interest in the newspaper in 1891 and moved to Fort Worth with her children. Dabbs was the eighth woman to practice medicine in Fort Worth. The Texas Health Journal states that she "has already met with great encouragement in her special line of work." She became a writer for the National Economist, a newsletter of the National Farmers' Alliance. Dabbs was a delegate from Texas for both the Farmers' Alliance and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1892. Dabbs also was the state chair of the Woman's Southern Council. Dabbs was involved in creating the first women's suffrage society in Texas in 1893, called the Texas Equal Rights Association (TERA). Dabbs worked with Rebecca Henry Hayes in TERA, and together they were able to sign up 48 men and women at the first meeting in May 1893. They attended the Congress of Representative Women at the Columbian Exposition along with Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and others. The following year, she served as president of the "Women's Congress," renamed the State Council of Women of Texas, at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas. She also promoted age-of-consent legislation for Texas in 1894. Dabbs became involved in 1897 in promoting a bill which would establish a women's industrial school in Texas. This school later became Texas Woman's University. During the Spanish–American War, Dabbs volunteered as a "contract nurse" and served at Camp Cuba Libre in Jacksonville, Florida. However, her contract was annulled after six weeks for "unknown reasons." Dabbs contracted tuberculosis while at Camp Cuba Libre, where the hygiene conditions were poor. Her house in Fort Worth was destroyed by fire in 1899, though no one was injured; and Dabbs returned to Rusk County to practice medicine for some time. Dabbs eventually moved to Oklahoma. She had traded her farm in Rusk County for a place to live in Waurika, where she continued to practice medicine, including delivering her first grandchild in March 1906. Her tuberculosis was