One of ‘Watonga’s notable citizens is Theresa Hunt Tyler, the town’s first dentist at a time when few women practiced that profession.’ hpps://www.watongaok.g ov/history . This past week, I had the pleasure of several email exchanges with Don Tyler, a 1965 graduate of Watonga High School who now lives in Mexico. Our fathers had complementary dry good stores on Main Street in Watonga when we were growing up (Tyler’s and Anthony’s). Don Tyler had contacted the Ferguson Home Museum because his grandmother, Theresa Hunt Tyler, had lived on the third floor of the newly built Ferguson home from about 1901 to 1904. Don shared with me “Grandmother Tyler lived in the two third floor rooms in the Ferguson House from 1901 or 0it to 1904 when she married. Her first ‘dental office’ was in a barber shop near the old train depot. It was in the block where the old End of Main building is. She boarded in a hotel in the same block. Dr. Tyler saved money to buy a proper dental chair and rent an office. She became friends with Warren and Violet Hooper. She rented a room above Hooper Drug Store at Main and Noble where Stewart Realty is today as her first real dental office. Meanwhile, the Fergusons had rented the Ferguson House to the Hoopers when the family moved to Guthrie so that T.B. could serve as Territorial Governor. The Hoopers rented the two rooms on the third floor to my grandmother. Grandmother told me she was very grateful to the Hoopers as there were not a lot of places for a single woman to rent in Watonga in 1901.” Dr. Theresa Tyler was a 1901 graduate of what is now the University of Missouri College of Dentistry. Don writes “My grandmother, Theresa Tyler, was the first registered woman dentist in Oklahoma, the first dentist in Watonga and one of the first female graduates of what is now the University of Missouri School of Dentistry. She came to Watonga in 1901 and practiced for 50 years.”
Don mentions there exist a “class graduation photo from dental school in 1901 just before she took the train, as a single woman, to Watonga. She went to Watonga based on a rumor from a classmate that Watonga did not have a dentist. We have photos of her in her dental office and tending to an Indian in an encampment holding the reins of her horse with teepees in the background, etc.”
Don relates her son, Hugh Tyler, “would saddle her horse (side saddle) very early in the morning and she would ride to Eagle City and perform dentistry in a barber shop. She would ride back to Watonga at the end of the day.” One of the rooms at the Noble House Bed and Breakfast is named for Dr. Theresa Hunt-Tyler.