Mary Carson Breckinridge (1881–1965)

Mary Carson Breckinridge was an American nurse midwife whose contributions left a significant impact on rural healthcare.

Mary Breckinridge was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on February 17, 1881, to Katherine Carson Breckenridge and Clifton Rodes Breckinridge. The family was a political dynasty, with her father serving as a congressman and United States minister to Russia and her grandfather, John C. Breckinridge, serving as vice president of the United States under President James Buchanan. She had three siblings.

Breckinridge’s prominent family enabled her to have an eventful childhood, as she studied with tutors in the United States and throughout Europe, including Switzerland and Russia. In 1904, Breckinridge married a lawyer, Henry Ruffner Morrison, from Hot Springs (Garland County), but he died in 1906. Following the death of her husband, Breckinridge briefly left Arkansas and attended school at St. Luke’s Hospital of Nursing in New York.

In 1912, Breckinridge married Kentucky native Richard Ryan Thompson, who worked at Crescent College and Conservatory in Eureka Springs (Carroll County). The couple had two children who died at early ages; their premature deaths further influenced Breckinridge’s interest in healthcare. In 1920, she divorced Thompson. At this same time, an influenza epidemic plagued the United States and other nations, allowing Breckinridge the opportunity to aid nurses in Washington DC and work in the tenements in Boston, Massachusetts.

Following her work in the United States, Breckinridge traveled to Europe to help with the American Committee for Devastated France that was established at the end of World War I. The experience Breckinridge gained in France was instrumental in the creation of the Frontier Nursing Service, a service that would later define her career in healthcare.

Breckinridge traveled to Hebrides, Scotland, in 1924. While in Scotland, she observed ways to deliver health services to people living in rural areas. A year following those observations, she moved to Leslie County, Kentucky, and established the Frontier Nursing Service. Nurses traveled on horseback and provided services to rural Kentuckians. With this care, maternal and neonatal death rates declined, falling below the national average.

The Frontier Nursing Service, directed by Breckinridge, eventually led to the founding of the American Association of Nurse-Midwives in 1929, as well as the establishment of the Frontier Graduate School of Midwifery in 1939. Breckinridge dedicated the last decades of her life to traveling around the country, fundraising for nursing and midwife services. In 1952, she published the autobiographical Wide Neighborhoods: A Story of the Frontier Nursing Service.

Breckinridge died on May 16, 1965, in Hyden, Kentucky. She is buried in Lexington Cemetery in Lexington, Kentucky.

Breckinridge was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 1982 and  the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995. The United States Postal Service issued a stamp in her honor in 1998.

For additional information:
Breckinridge, Mary. Wide Neighborhoods: A Story of the Frontier Nursing Service. Louisville: University of Kentucky Press, 1952.

Bullough, V. L., O. M. Church, and A. P. Stein, eds. American Nursing: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland, 1988. Online at https://archive.org/details/americannursingb0000unse_p4r7/page/n3/mode/2up (accessed August 3, 2024).

Hannah Koons
Pocahontas, Arkansas