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| photo from wikipedia |
I came across Bethenia Owens-Adair when I was researching
female doctors for my book Doctor in
Petticoats. I needed accounts of female doctors in the 1800’s. But Bethenia
stuck out in my memory because of not only being a female doctor in a time when
there were few, but she was also a divorced woman and one who had overcome many
hardships to fulfill her dream.
In 1859 she married LeGrand Hill in Roseburg, Oregon at the
age of fourteen. By sixteen she’d given
birth to her only child and became a divorced woman at the age of nineteen.
A quote from her autobiography, Dr. Owens-Adair; Some of Her Life Experiences (1906) “I was,
indeed, surrounded with difficulties seemingly insurmountable, __a husband for
whom I had lost all love and respect, a divorce, the stigma of which would
cling to me all my future life, and a sickly babe I my arms, all rose darkly
before me.”
Her greatest assets were her innate optimism, stamina, and
her refusal to be a victim. Her courage
to leave an abusive marriage, provided for herself and her son and gain an
education to become one of the first women to practice medicine in Oregon has
made her an icon of many women over the years.
Most of her life was spent in the Pacific Northwest, but she
was born in Van Buren County, Missouri, the second of nine children. When she
was three, her family migrated to Oregon Country. They first settled in the
Clatsop Plains in 1843 and later moved to the Umpqua Valley across the river
from Roseburg.
Bethenia was small- 5 feet 4 inches. She’d always wished to
be a boy and until the age of twenty-five would not be outdone by her brother
in wrestling or feats of strength. “…I realized early in life that a girl was
hampered and hemmed in on all sides simply by the accident of sex” She was one
of the first women libbers.
When a man took liberties when she was thirteen and washing
clothes she used the long broom handle she was stirring the wash with and beat
him until her mother pulled her off. Her words to the man, “You little skunk,
if you ever dare to come near me again, I’ll kill you”
But she was not immune to men and being wooed. She married
LeGrand Hill, one of her father’s farmhands. He turned out to prefer hunting
and reading to working and after the divorce when asked why she left her
husband Bethenia said “ Because he whipped my baby unmercifully and struck and
choked me,—and I was never born to be struck by mortal man”
When she divorced Bethenia knew she’d be protected by her
parents but she was an independent woman and was determined to provide for
herself and George, her son. She
reclaimed her maiden name and worked washing clothes, sewing, and taught school
so she could complete her education. She moved around but ended up back in
Roseburg in 1867 and started up a successful dressmaking and millinery business
for six years.
This is where she became involved with the temperance and
woman suffrage causes. She was a friend of Abigail Scott Duniway and became a
subscription agent and regular contributor to Duniway’s woman’s rights
newspaper the New Northwest located
in Portland, Oregon.
After her son attended college Bethenia entered medical
school. She enjoyed nursing the sick. There were only a few options for a woman
to enter a medical school. She was admitted to Eclectic Medical College in
Philadelphia. The institution trained sectarian practitioners as homeopaths,
hydropaths, and eclectics. When she told family and friends of her enrollment
they were strongly opposed. Women weren’t doctors!
While her family, including her own son, opposed her
becoming a doctor, her dear friends Jesse Applegate, an early Oregon pioneer
encouraged Bethenia to study medicine.
In 1873, she arranged for George to board with Duniway and work on her
newspaper, and then Bethenia headed east. A year later she returned with her
medical degree and opened an office in Portland. She specialized in care of women and
children.
In the fall of 1878 she enrolled in the University of
Michigan’s Medical School. Even her dear friend Jesse Applegate thought it was
foolish to leave a profitable practice to return to school.
But Bethenia wanted a medical degree from a reputable
institution. She received that degree in 1880 at the age of forty. She then
spent that summer of clinical and hospital work in Chicago and did postgraduate
work at Michigan and toured European hospitals.
She returned to Portland and her new specialty was diseases of the eyes
and ears with the majority of her patients still being women and children.
She married Col. John Adair, a graduate of West Point, in
1884. She birthed a child three years later at the age of forty-seven but he
child only lived three days. They adopted two boys and lived on a farm near
Astoria for eleven years where Bethenia had a general practice as a country
doctor.
By 1899 rheumatism drove Bethenia to a better climate, She
and her husband moved to North Yakima, Washington where her son, George, was
practicing medicine. Bethenia retired in 1905 and the next year her
autobiography was published. Her husband died in 1915 and she followed him
September 11, 1926 at the age of eighty-six.
Bethenia Owens-Adair was a testament to what a woman can
attain if she has a mind to. Every time I read her story it makes me proud to
know there were women before me who stuck to their guns and went against
society to better themselves.
Sources:
Pacific Northwest
Women 1815-1925 by Jean M. Ward & Elaine A. Maveety
Dr. Owens-Adair; Some of Her Life Experiences
(1906) by Dr. Owens-Ad
