(Host) In recognition of Women’s History Month, retired educator and historian Mary Fregosi has a story from her
hometown of Proctor – about the woman who became the first Industrial Nurse in the United States.
(Fregosi)
Ada Mayo Stewart was a trailblazer in the field of industrial nursing.
Born in Braintree, Massachusetts on December 2nd, 1870, she graduated
from Vermont Academy in Saxton’s River in 1889 and attended the Waltham
School of Nursing in her native state.
Waltham was a progressive
school that specialized in district and private nursing as well as in
visiting nursing. When Fletcher Proctor, president of the Vermont Marble
Company, decided to hire a nurse to provide care for his employees and
their families, he consulted the superintendent at Waltham. She
recommended Ada , a recent graduate with special training in surgical
and dispensary work.
When Ada began her work with the Vermont
Marble Company in Proctor in March of 1895, she became the first
industrial nurse in the United States. Many of the company’s employees
were Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Swedish, and Italian immigrants who spoke
little or no English. So Ada learned a smattering of essential words in
various languages, and that – along with some creative sign language –
helped the situation. She soon established a good rapport with these
families, in part due to her efforts to incorporate their cultural
customs and methods of caring for the sick whenever possible. She once
remarked that it was as a district nurse in Proctor that she first saw a
babe in swaddling clothes.
Ada made home visits by bicycle to
check on sick and injured workers and their families. She promoted good
hygiene and healthy living. Sometimes she found herself giving first aid
or diagnosing a broken bone that would need a doctor’s attention.
One
day, a friend who was a teacher in one of the village schools asked Ada
to speak to her class about health and what Ada called "right living."
This prompted Fletcher Proctor to insist that she speak to all the
pupils in the schools and so began school nursing in the Rutland area.
Fletcher
Proctor also hired Ada ‘s sister, Harriet Wyman Stewart, to work in a
similar capacity in West Rutland. He also founded a hospital in Proctor
in 1896 and made Ada its matron. From then on public health nursing was
carried on in connection with the hospital.
Ada left the
hospital in 1900 and worked as a nurse in various parts of the United
States but in 1918 on a visit to her sister in West Rutland she met
Henry J. Markolf. She married him – and retired.
Toward the end
of her life she wrote: "The Proctor district nurse went about her daily
task of giving advice and comfort, bathing new babies, caring for the
mothers, helping in emergencies, dressing wounds and teaching ways of
health and good habits in seven languages as well as she knew. She did
not know that she was an industrial nurse nor did she dream that these
and other small beginnings would grow to the splendid work that the
modern public health nurses are doing in the world."