Martha E. Bucknell (1823-1915) was born in Cornish, Maine, and died in Los Angeles, California. Bucknell was one of the first women to practice medicine in California. She moved to the state with her husband, Benjamin F. Bucknell, a ship's surgeon, in 1850. He passed away in 1859, and in an effort to support herself and their child, Bucknell eventually returned east and graduated with a M.D. from the New England Female Medical College in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1872. Following the model of Elizabeth Blackwell's "New York Infirmary for Indigent Women," Bucknell, Charlotte Blake Brown, and Sara E. Brown founded the "Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children" in San Francisco, California, in 1875, a hospital in which all attending staff, interns, and residents were women. In 1876, the three women gained membership to the California State Medical Society with immediate appointments to special committees on diseases of women and children. The hospital was reincorporated in 1885 as "The Hospital for Children and Training School for Nurses." Bucknell later moved to Los Angeles with her daughter's family and would remain there until her death.

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