Breckenridge
Mary Carson Breckinridge was born on February 17, 1881 in Memphis, Tennessee, into a wealthy family. Her grandfather was Vice President John C. Breckinridge, and her father was an Arkansas congressman who later served as U.S. Minister to Russia. She became a registered nurse in 1910 after the death of her first husband. After the deaths of her two children, she committed herself to the health of children and families, and she spent three years in France with the American Committee for Devastated France after World War I.
In the summer of 1923, she rode more than 650 miles on horseback through the hills of Kentucky to survey the local midwives. No midwifery course was offered in the United States at that time, so she trained in England and then studied the health services of the Scottish Highlands. On May 28, 1925, she founded the Kentucky Committee for Mothers and Babies, which soon became the Frontier Nursing Service. Its nurse-midwives traveled by horseback from Hyden, Kentucky, to reach families in remote areas with no reliable roads. By the time she died on May 16, 1965, the service had treated nearly 58,000 patients and delivered more than 14,500 babies, with only 11 maternal deaths.
Breckinridge was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995, and the Frontier Nursing University still trains nurse-midwives today. In 1998 the Postal Service honored her with a 77-cent Great Americans series stamp, and an equestrian statue was dedicated to her in Hyden in 2010. Frontier Nursing University’s own task force acknowledged in 2021 that she held racist beliefs, and that is part of the full picture of her life.
Note
Another blank page of boring definitives. I should just remove the page, but as a collector I feel compelled to keep it. Next time I go to the U.S. I’ll try getting these stamps.
Contains 14 spots: own 0 – 0 unused, 0 used.
Stamp Details
The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.
spot |
own |
catalog |
subject |
description |
comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2935 |
32¢ (apr 1998) |
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2936 |
32¢ (jul 1998) |
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2942 |
77¢ (nov 1998) |
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3207 |
0 (jun 1998) |
||||
3207A |
0 (dec 1998) |
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3228a |
0 (aug 1998) |
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3229 |
0 (aug 1998) |
||||
3208 |
0 (jun 1998) |
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3208A |
0 (sep 1998) |
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3271 |
0 (dec 1998) |
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3270 |
0 (dec 1998) |
||||
3055 |
20¢ (jul 1998) |
||||
3050 |
20¢ (jul 1998) |
||||
3036 |
1$ (aug 1998) |
Footnotes
Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.
