HILLS AND HOLLOWS
GRANNY WOMEN
By Karen Utter Jennings
Disclaimer: In writing this article,
I make no claims to persuade folks to choose folk remedies over a medical
doctor should a person have an illness. I merely write historical articles about
interesting topics, and especially enjoy researching women and history. So with
that in mind, I give you information about midwifery in Southwest
Missouri.
Women have always been the backbone
of families. They served in many capacities and their duties included caring for
their children, their husband, and many times their elderly parents, siblings,
as well as neighbors and friends. Homemakers did not need a job outside of the
home, for homemaking included everything from making soap and doing the
laundry, caring for the needy and the ill, to helping tend the farm work when need
be.
In days long gone, Ozarks women learned
from their own mothers and grandmothers how to care for the sick and how to
help bring babies into the world. Their medicine came from the earth; the
plants, flowers and trees provided remedies to cure the sick and afflicted.
The most knowledgeable and
experienced of these women were healers and midwifes, often-called Granny Women.
They were known far and wide for their giving service and helping hands. Folks
depended upon the woman to come when the need arose and they relied on the Granny
Woman’s special knowledge of herbs, roots, and concoctions. Those women had
skills and the wisdom to use the native plants for healing purposes.
In early days, doctors were few and
far between. Sometimes the great distance a doctor had to travel was a
hindrance for those who were gravely ill. Before the turn of the century, many
doctors were not trained in the knowledge of germs. The states lacked
standardized licensing requirements, the quality of their education varied, and
so their medical practices were handled with crude effectiveness.
Many rural Ozarkian women preferred
the familiar Granny Woman to treat them with their mild herbal remedies and to
deliver their babies. Traditional midwives met the concern for modesty during
the birthing process, an important consideration in areas where the use of male
doctors might offend an entire community.
Some midwives carried a “midwife’s
book” to reference when complicated childbirth procedures arose. Sometimes they
used superstitious rituals to give mothers psychological relief such as having
the mother hold something that belonged to her husband to symbolically bring
him into the delivery room. Their use of herbal remedies and teas helped speed
the birth along; but they might also use morphine tablets or quinine when the
pain became unbearable, if the medicine was available.
After the birth of a baby, the Granny
Woman might stay for a week or longer to help about the house and allow the new
mother time in bed to heal. Caring for the new mother, the new baby, and doing
housework and household chores was of great importance to keep the woman from
hemorrhaging or having other childbirth complications.
Many times Granny Woman was not paid
with money. Rather, they accepted whatever offering the family could provide at
the time, possibly giving her meat or chickens, vegetables from the garden or
enough material to make a dress. If the family had nothing, that was all right,
too.
As midwives became certified within
their home state, they were able to charge to attend births. The going rate in 1906
was $3.00 her birth attendance.
Granny Women knew how to prepare
herbs, roots, tree bark and other native plants and flowers to make healing
ointments, teas, poultices, and concoctions. Most native roots had to be
gathered before the sap began to rise because they lost their value after that.
And, some plants became poisonous at certain points in their growth cycle.
For example, Southwest Missouri
midwives surely combined sage, peppermint, black walnut, slippery elm bark, pokeroot,
horseradish, elderberries, dill weed, with honey, black strap molasses, lard,
onions, vinegar and whiskey to make tonics, potions, plasters, poultices, and
teas. And many a child with an earache had tobacco smoke blown into their ears
as a cure.
The Missouri Medical College was
originally organized in 1840 as the Medical Department of Kemper College. It
was the first medical school established west of the Mississippi river. In
1845, it became the Medical Department of the University of Missouri. There are
a few women midwives listed on the Missouri History Program website, all of
whom lived in St. Louis, Missouri for the years of 1888-1892.
The American Medical Association was
founded in 1847. Eventually doctors began to resent midwives. They looked upon
the granny women as competition for business. The medical profession was
growing and insisted upon education, standard examination procedures, and
licensing requirements for all practicing physicians. Throughout the nation,
doctors waged a campaign to run midwives out of business. They portrayed the women
as being ignorant of medical procedures and lacking cleanliness.
Midwives practiced cleanliness by
scrubbing and cleaning their homes on a daily basis. After attending
deliveries, they cleaned up the bed and the new mother and infant. Sterile
environments did not come along until years later when hospitals flourished.
Even though European countries were
establishing schools of midwifery, American doctors were refusing to admit
women to medical schools. When the American Medical Association demanded that
all people practicing medicine be trained and then licensed, that was the demise
of midwifery.
However, in the isolated hills and
hollows of the Ozarks Mountains in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, as
well as other isolated parts of the United States, Granny Women continued to
serve their communities with their skills into the twentieth century. Ozarks folklorists
have collected information about these women and their healing practices.
Until the New Deal programs and
World War II changed the region’s financial system and transportation, bad
roads and the lack of money forced most Ozarkians to rely on native remedies
prepared by the womenfolk of the family.
Eventually, pregnant women began to
enter hospitals to give birth and Granny Women went by the wayside. The science
of medicine scoffed at the nurturing and holistic care that midwives had
provided their family, friends and neighbors.
The era of the women’s healing art
of domestic medicine is now history. But if we look closely into our own family
history, we would surely find Granny Women.
My great, great-grandmother Nancy
Smith Johnson practiced midwifery and the healing arts in the hills and hollows
of McDonald County, Missouri. Although I have not found any legal certificates
providing that information, it is noted in her obituary. Taken from her
obituary, it reads: “The nights were never too dark nor the times too hard for Nancy
Johnson to willingly lend a helping hand in time of need. She could count by
the dozens the babies she helped into the world and the lives she practically
saved. Her cheerful disposition and pleasant smile made her most enjoyable to
all around her.”
My family photographs of Nancy
Johnson show her as short and petite, with black hair and a thin face with a
sharp jutting chin and high cheekbones. She bore five children in her lifetime
and passed away in 1949 at Rocky Comfort, Missouri.
Among the acquisitions at the
McDonald County Historical Museum, we found Delpha Laughlin’s midwife
certificate. Issued on October 20th, 1884, at the State Board of
Health in Hannibal, Missouri, it certifies that Laughlin had practiced
midwifery for a period of ten years and was therefore legally authorized to
practice in the state. Laughlin received her certificate at Powell, Missouri,
on January 1, 1885.
Today midwifery is an
internationally recognized profession. The American College of Nurse-Midwives
includes the primary health care of women and their newborn children. A
Certified Nurse-Midwife (CNM) is a woman who is educated in nursing and
midwifery, who possesses certification according to the requirements of the
American College of Nurse-Midwives.
The Nurse-Midwifery practice manages women’s health care,
focusing on pregnancy, childbirth, the postpartum period, care of the newborn,
and the family planning and gynecological needs of women. The Certified
Nurse-Midwife practices within a health care system that provides for consultation,
collaborative management or referral as indicated by the health status of the
client.
Despite
the evolution of medicine, Ozarks women continued to practice the healing arts
that had been handed down from mother to daughter. Instilled in the women, they
did whatever was necessary to care for their family and friends, in sickness
and in health.
The
herb garden was grown right alongside the vegetable garden. In the fields and
woods native plants, trees, and flowers grew in abundance offering their
healing properties for those who gathered and gleaned.
In
this modern world, there are those who scoff at and become quite angry with the
thought of people seeking holistic health and “folk,” “home,” or “natural”
remedies. And of course, after doctors spend countless years of study and pay
for it all, they do not want to hear of someone seeking backwoods cures.
Today herbs are a big industry. Herbal stores and natural
food stores run a brisk business. Women have always known how to care for their
own. I remember my grandmothers using herbs and plants to put a meal on the
table and to heal what ailed us. And I am certainly proud to have found a Granny
Woman in my family history and to have the certificate for Delpha Laughlin at
the McDonald County Historical Society.
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References for this article
come from online sources: Missouri History Museum: Genealogy and Local History
Index; Missouri Medical College (http://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/missouri); an online
workshop, “Herbal Lore and The Historic Medicinal Uses of Herbs”; a copy of
Delpha Laughlin’s Midwife Certificate; and from the obituary of Nancy Johnson
from the Wheaton Journal on DVD, courtesy of the MO Historical Society.
