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Margaret Dorothea Craighill was born October 16, 1898, in Southport, South Carolina. She was the daughter of Colonel William E. Craighill and Mrs. Mary (Wortley Montague Byram) Craighill. On May 28, 1943, she became the first woman commissioned officer in the United States Army Medical Corps. Craighill served in World War II and afterward worked with the Veterans Administration. She passed away on July 20, 1977, in Southbury, Connecticut.

Craighill received her Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Master of Science (MS) degrees from the University of Wisconsin, finishing her studies in 1921. Upon graduation, she briefly worked as a physiologist with the Chemical Warfare Department of the United States Army at Edgewood Arsenal in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. After this, Craighill enrolled at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and graduated with her Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 1924.

After 1926, Craighill served as an assistant resident of gynecology at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland until 1928.

After leaving Johns Hopkins, Craighill worked as an assistant surgeon under Dr. J. A. McCreery at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, New York. At the same time, she privately practiced obstetrics and gynecology at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut as an assistant surgeon. Craighill practiced at Bellevue and Greenwich until 1937.

Simultaneously, Craighill was an assistant gynecologist and obstetrician at the Philadelphia General Hospital.

In 1943, Craighill requested a leave of absence from the college to enlist in the United States Army Medical Corps.

After President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Sparkman-Johnson Bill, which allowed women to enlist in the army and navy Medical Corps, Criaghill signed up. On May 28, 1943, she became the first woman commissioned as an officer in the United States Army Medical Corps.

Craighill was responsible for the inspection of the field conditions of all women in the United States army, which took eight and a half months and carried her to places all around the world. Over the course of her military career, Craighill traveled roughly 56,000 miles to places such as Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA).

In September of 1946, she accepted a surgical position with the Veterans Administration (VA) at Winters Veterans Hospital in Topeka, Kansas, and resided as chief of the psychosomatic section from 1948 to 1951.

Craighill, along with nine other branch section chiefs stationed around the country, was responsible for the oversight of the medical care of women.

One, in particular, was titled Psychiatric Aspects of Women Serving in the Army.

Margaret D. Craighill died at the age of 78 on July 20, 1977, at home in Heritage Village, Southbury, Connecticut. She never had children and was the widow of Dr. James Vickers and Alexander S. Wotherspoon.