Born: February 17, 1881,
Memphis, Tennessee
Died: May 15, 1965
"Even the Frontier Nursing Service hasn't yet reached that section of the mountains," he told Bertha.
--From Cherry Ames, Mountaineer Nurse, p. 8
Mary Breckinridge founded the Frontier Nursing Service--the "nurses on horseback"--to provide care to people in remote areas of the Appalachian Mountains.
Highlights
Mary Breckinridge studied nursing for three years at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City after being widowed; she then remarried, lost two children, and divorced.
As a Red Cross volunteer, she cared for mothers and children in France after World War I and helped establish a visiting nurse service there.
She studied public health nursing in the United States and midwifery in England.
She started the Kentucky Committee for Mothers and Babies (later the Frontier Nursing Service) in 1925 in the Appalachians, with nurse midwives on horseback providing midwifery, prenatal, and other health care services in remote rural areas.
Mary Breckinridge: Frontier Nurse
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