FORMAL MEDICAL CARE on the Mendocino coast was sparse in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, due to few doctors living here. Women often acted as nurse, doctor and pharmacist, treating their families as best as they could before calling for a physician. Doctors could take hours to arrive by horse or foot. In 1906, the Fort Bragg Advocate commented on this (with a sarcastic twist), writing “Every mother is a trained nurse, with the two unimportant exceptions of the uniform and the wages.”
In March 1982, “Mendocino Medicine & Gazetteer” ran a piece titled “Frontier Medicine: Healthcare in Mendocino County at the Turn of the Century,” which featured oral histories that testified to women’s role in healthcare. In his interview, Elmer Walker stated “Medicine? Mother doctored me up.” Walker told a story of his brother choking on a fishbone, and the nearest doctor being too far away even on horseback. To save her choking son, his mother used a buttonhook to fish the bone out. “And the patient lived,” said Walker.
Women on the rural coast also acted as midwives, delivering babies in people’s homes instead of a doctor’s office. Midwives were often older women, mothers or grandmothers themselves. Some neighborhoods had a semiformal network of midwives, one or two women who could be called upon, like doctors would be, when a woman nearby began experiencing labor pains.
Mrs. Lindquist was a midwife in the Noyo River area. She didn’t have a telephone, but her neighbor did. This neighbor would take calls and run over to Mrs. Lindquist’s house, who would promptly set out for up to five miles on foot.
By the late 1930s the system was formalized enough that midwives testified to county officials to witness a birth (similar procedures existed for deaths, in an effort to maintain reliable population records). Midwives kept records of children they delivered and traveled to Ukiah once or twice a year to submit these records.
In a statement dated September 9, 1939, Marie Gloria Andre of Mendocino swore she “acted as midwife at the birth of a son born to John Roland Rodgers and Anna Pereia Rodgers, then of Mendocino … and that she knows of her own knowledge that said child is now known as Sylvester Rodgers, and is now a resident of Mendocino.” From informal care to systemized networks, women played an important role in the health of Mendocino residents.
Kelley House Museum curator Averee McNear writes a weekly column on Mendocino County history for Mendocino Voice. To learn more, visit kelleyhousemuseum.org.