"Harriet N. Austin, M. D., was born in Connecticut Aug. 31, 1826. She came to Moravia, Cayuga Co., N. Y., with her family and after finishing her education in the schools of the village graduated in medicine at the college presided over by Dr. R. T. Trall, in New York City. This was the first so-called Hydropathic college grounding its students in all the ordinary branches of medical practice except those of drug giving, teaching a new system of therapeutics modified somewhat, but practically the same as that introduced by Priesnitz, the Bavarian peasant, the so-called discoverer of the water cure or hydropathic treatment of disease.

Soon after her graduation she sought admission to the medical staff of the Glen Haven water cure, at that time presided over by Dr. James C. Jackson, who was afterwards the founder of The Jackson Sanatorium in Dansville, becoming an active practitioner in that institution about the year 1852. Her talent and most excellent work, and her superior character led to her being adopted into the Jackson family, thus becoming a permanent member thereof, so that when Dr. Jackson and his family came to Dansville to open the Institution, at that time known as Our Home on the Hillside, she came also, and became a partner in the first business enterprise and continued to be identified with the same actively and in a business and professional way until the reorganization of the Institution after the fire in 1882, at which time she sold her interest to Dr. James H. Jackson, though she continued to write for the "Laws of Life and Journal of Health," a magazine of which she had been editor for many years, and through which, by her writings, she had large influence on the public in the direction of medical reform, and particularly along the line of reformation in dress for women. She was one of the members of Dr. Jackson's family, who in association with many of the guests and helpers of Hillside, wore the so-called "American costume" for many years, both at home and abroad, and was known as one of the leading dress-reformers of the country, traveling and speaking in favor of the American costume as a dress for women, much more healthful, and in every way better fitted for them for many reasons, than the long skirts and tight waists prescribed by fashion. Her picture at the head of this sketch represents her in her costume, and will doubtless in the minds of many old residents of the town call up association of the early days of the Institution, and incidents in the history of the village.

Miss Austin died at the residence of Dr. Jackson in North Adams, Mass., in May, 1891, and was buried in the Jackson lot in Greenmount cemetery."

Harriet N. Austin
Excerpts from History of Dansville, 1789 - 1902,
by A. O. Bunnell and F. I. Quick, compiled by
Martha Treichler

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"Our Home on the Hillside was a popular site on the lecture circuit; Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Horace Greeley all spoke in Dansville. Topping the list was Clara Barton, who returned to Dansville in 1876, physically exhausted from years of non-stop travel and work, to recuperate at Our Home. She kept a residence in Dansville for the next ten years; and, when she founded the American Red Cross in 1881, she assisted in the establishment of a local chapter in Dansville, the first local Red Cross chapter in the nation."

Dansville's Castle on the Hill by David Gilbert.

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After the deaths of her parents Harriet was adopted by
Dr. James C. Jackson and his wife Lucretia Jackson.