Sarah Read Adamson was born in Schuylkill Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, on 11 March 1829. She attended a Quaker school in Philadelphia as a child. Her uncle, Dr. Hiram Corson, initially opposed her desire to become a doctor, but eventually agreed to tutor her and later allowed her to study in his office before applying to medical school. After being denied entry to many medical colleges, Dolley became one of four women admitted to the Central Medical College, in Rochester, New York, and received her M.D. in 1851. She became the first woman intern in America at Blockley Almshouse in Philadelphia. She interned for a year before marrying one of the professors at Central Medical College, Dr. Lester Dolley, in 1852 and returning to Rochester where they ran a private practice together until his death in 1827. They had two children together, Loilyn and Charles Sumner, although only her son survived to adulthood, as Loilyn died of pneumonia as the age of 4. She continued her education by attending clinics in the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris from 1869 to 1870, as well as clinics in Prague and Vienna in1875. She temporarily worked as a professor of obstetrics from 1873 to 1874 at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and after Dolley returned to private practice in Rochester. She made efforts to help women get hired in hospital positions that they could not previously obtain, knowing how much she had benefitted from the experiences of her internship. In 1886 she was one of a group of women who founded of a clinic for the medical and surgical care of needy women and children, naming it the Provident Dispensary Association, and Dolley became its first president. The same group also founded the Practitioners Society, which in 1906 was re-named the Blackwell Society. The Women's Medical Society of the State of New York was launched by the Blackwell Society, also with Dolley as the president. She helped to organize a chapter of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in 1893. Dolley also made endeavors to help her community, co-founding the Rochester chapter of the American Red Cross. She was politically active in advocating for women's suffrage, and in the 1872 presidential election attempted to register and vote. She created a reputation for herself in her community of being a good doctor, even among her male colleagues, which was unusual of a woman physician in her time. Dolley died on 27 December 1909.
