Frontier Nursing Service

Surprisingly, even many of those who work in healthcare services today are not aware that deep in the heart of the Appalachian Mountain is where the first rural midwife school in America began. The year was 1925 and the woman at the helm of this remarkable nonprofit organization was Mary Breckinridge, a socialite by class; an activist and reformer by nature. In the nonfiction book, The Frontier Nursing Service; Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies published by McFarland in 2009, the stories of Breckinridge and her merry band of British nurse-midwives is told in very human terms.

From Socialite to Activist – Mary Breckinridge

Born into wealth, Mary Breckinridge could have easily devoted her life to social outings and elitist parties. Instead, she chose to find the highest infant mortality rate in the U.S. and reverse it. With family ties in eastern Kentucky, the Appalachian region seemed a logical place to start. In 1925, Mary Breckinridge set off on horseback to explore the area, one of the poorest parts of America, and it was there, in a dot-on-the-map place called Hyden, KY that she stumbled across what would eventually serve as the headquarters of the Frontier Nursing Service: America’s First Rural Nurse-Midwife Service and School.

What Mary Breckinridge Intended

Mary Breckinridge had no intention of remaining in eastern Kentucky. But once the Frontier Service Nursing was established in 1925, and she had enlisted the help of British nurse-midwives to expand the healthcare organization, there was no turning back.

Breckinridge would end up spending her entire life at the Frontier Nursing Service, living in a two-story log home and directing the work of the trained nurse-midwives. She was active until well into her eighties, and when she died in 1965, her room and the artifacts surrounding the history of the FNS remained. Today, the FNS is a national historic site and a quaint Bed & Breakfast, located in Hyden, Kentucky, population 300.

The book: The Frontier Nursing Service Nursing (McFarland, 2009)

Told through the amazing personal accounts of the women who rode on horseback throughout a 700-mile region between 1928 and 1965, the Frontier Nursing book is full of human interest stories about the healthcare provided to women and their families in a time and a place when most could not afford even a trip to the doctor. Most of the recollections were based on more than 185 oral histories made available to the author by the University of Kentucky Library Special Archives Collection in Lexington, Kentucky.

Among the many true stories:

• Why children believed that nurses brought the babies on horseback; hence the term “Saddlebag Babies.”
• How the FNS struggled to gain acceptance and credibility in a region that was well-known for its mistrust of “outsiders.”
• How proper British midwives were enticed to come to the poorest part of America, ride a horse, and learn the language and customs of a people they could barely comprehend.
• The critical role that horses played in getting the nurse-midwives to their destination – literally saving lives in the process
• Why Mary Breckinridge loved animals almost as she loved people
• How and why couriers played such an important part in the success of the FNS
• Overcoming financial hardships and wartime deprivation as needs rose and resources fell
• How natural disasters affected not just the region, but the work of the Frontier Nursing Service
• How, in the end, progress wrought changes – both good and bad – to the Frontier Nursing Service