Oral History Interview with Mary W. Duncan

Interviewer: Mary Wentland Duncan in Louisville, Kentucky. Mrs. Duncan was a public health nurse for the Red Cross in 1922 in Wayne County. And then she came back later in 1942 through 1963, had experience as a public health nurse with the public health department in Wayne County. Miss Duncan, where are you from? Originally, that is.

Duncan: From South Bend, Indiana. But I was born in the country, not the city of South Bend. But South Bend was our county seat. It was St. Joseph County, Indiana.

Interviewer: Can you remember some things about your childhood?

Duncan: What on earth do you want such personal things like that?

Interviewer: Just to get some idea of the type of life that people had back in the country in those days, back in, what would that be, early twentieth century?

Duncan: Yes. But that was in Indiana, and of course I remember many things. [laughs] I remember more things of that period than I do of the recent years. You know, the older you get, the closer to your childhood you get. At least, that’s my experience. I find myself humming the old songs that I learned as a child in school that were popular at that time. Whereas although on the television and everywhere I hear of the popular songs of today, they don’t, they don’t stick in my mind, it seems. But the old songs that I learned in a child, those are the ones that have stayed with me.

Interviewer: Did you have a good schooling, primary and secondary schooling?

Duncan: No. I went to a, I guess primary, yes. I went to a country school about a mile, a mile-and-a-half from where we lived. And it was a school with one teacher and eight grades. And of course I thought it was, it was all new, and I thought it was wonderful. [laughs] As a child, I wasn’t critical, you know. But I went there only seven years. And then the teacher recommended that I take the eighth grade exam, graduation examination at that time. I was between thirteen and fourteen. And she said, “I think you can pass it.” So I did. So that closed my primary education. And that fall I started to high school in South Bend. But my father became ill and our family was large. I was the next to the last of ten children. And just at that time, my older sisters had either married or gone away to work or somewhere. Anyway, they left home. Then it fell upon me to quit school and come home and keep house for my father. Which I did. And that was shortly after my first year in high school in South Bend. So, that practically closed my formal schooling. After, after my father’s death in 1912, we abandoned the farm. And I was then on my own. Because my mother had died in 1900, when I was just, well, I barely remember her. I was between three and four. And she was sick a long time before she died. And they kept the children isolated from her. So I don’t remember much about her except her funeral. I remember the funeral very well. Then, when my father died, I was sixteen and of course uneducated and untrained to do anything. But I was on my own. I was expected to go out and get a job and support myself. Well, I did. At various jobs, waitress and telephone company and this and that. And in that period, I stayed with a married sister in South Bend. But I always had in my mind that I wanted to be a trained nurse. And well, it’s, I hate to stray into all these details. Anyhow, in 1914 I was accepted as a student nurse in what they called then the Epworth Hospital. That was operated by the Methodist Church, I believe. And they had a regular three-year diploma program. And my class, there were only three students in my class. Just three girls in the class. And although I think that the, I think that the school did require that their students have a high school diploma, they were in such desperate need of students that not one of the three of us was a high school graduate. But we all completed the three years training course very successfully. And also went to Indianapolis, you know, and took the state board examination at the end of that. And passed that very satisfactorily. Well, then my training school offered me a position there at the hospital as head nurse on the floor. Head nurse. And of course I was delighted to accept. [laughs] I think back now, when I think of the salaries that nurses get these days and still complain about it, and the hours they complain, and so forth. Well, we worked six days a week. And the ordinary time, we would go to work at seven and quit at seven. And we had two hours off during the day. Then we would have one day off in the week, plus our regular annual vacation, of course. And I think holidays like Christmas and so forth, that I always, I always worked on those days because I had no real home to go to. And other nurses did and wanted to go home for Christmas and so forth. So I always volunteered to work and keep things going in the hospital. Well, let me see, I graduated there in the spring of 1916. But in January, 1918, I joined, the war, World War I was then going on. And the United States had gotten into it. And they were wanting registered nurses to come in as, with the Red Cross. And volunteers. And of course I was anxious to get into the war. So I did. I left the, I left the hospital in January, 1918. And in April, 1918, I was sent overseas as a, what they called Red Cross volunteer. We were not attached to any organized hospitals in those days. Were organizing their own units and going over, you know. Well, I was called on contingent, I think. And could be placed anywhere that they wanted to put me. Anyhow, when we got over to France, we were given the choice about staying at a base hospital at one of the ports in France, where they eventually brought the wounded, you know. Or going to the front. So I, I chose to go to the front because I thought after all, I’ve come over here to see the war and not to work in a base hospital at the port. I might just have stayed at home if I’m going to do that. And so I stayed in, Baccarat was the name of the place in France. It was right behind Strasburg and Nancy, in that area. And we were very, very near, we were very near the front. In fact, we occupied some old buildings that Napoleon and his army had occupied years ago. And we had turned them into a hospital. And of course we were subject to being bombed. But only one, they did not, I don’t think the Germans ever aimed to hit the hospital. But they did hit one of our personnel buildings. And some of our boys were killed, and others were wounded. But the hospital itself was never hit, although we had some near misses. And of course almost any day we could watch what they called dogfights in the area. The planes would come over to spy, I suppose. And of course British or American pilots would go up, and they would fight and eventually maybe one would run away. But often one would, you know, fell. And I don’t remember that they had parachutes. Maybe they did. But I just remember seeing those planes fall. I never knew whether they were German planes or some friendly, some Allied planes.

Interviewer: Did you all have ambulances, automobiles, trucks, to haul the wounded in to your sub hospital, and then the base hospital?

Duncan: Well, of course the base hospitals were far away. And our hospital was called a base hospital, but we received wounded from the field hospitals. The field hospitals were the first places. And of course they were just in tents. And then patients were brought to our hospital by any means of conveyance. Sometimes, they did have ambulances. And I remember they were these, and I often wonder whether that company still makes trucks. They were white. And I think Cleveland, Ohio, is where they were made.

Interviewer: Yes. Yes. Big trucks, yes.

Duncan: And they were good. Well, that is what we rode in all the time. We had several ambulances connected with our hospital. Well, I stayed there in Baccarat and we had sometimes, some busy nights. They would, you know, with the special (?) at the front. And of course we could always tell when we were going to have a lot of patients because of the explosions in the air. But in the latter part of the summer in 1918, you know, if you know anything about the World War I history, which I don’t, but anyway, they, the Allies made a concerted push in, so some of us were transferred to the, what do you call them? Where they have this, well, it was, let me think about it. I have a, my memory is miserable.

Interviewer: That’s all right. I understand.

Duncan: As to that. But anyway, we went up to the front where we were moving practically every day. We were attached to a field hospital then, and moving practically every day. We would pitch our tents and receive the wounded from the front, which was right ahead of us. And the doctors would patch up as best they could those they could. And those that were going to die were just put in the seriously wounded area. And they were left there to die. Others, hopeful cases, were sent immediately back to what they called the base hospitals, which is nearer the ports. Actually, I don’t know where they were sent. But anyway, we emptied our tent. And then, at the end of the day, we climbed into an ambulance and went up, went up the road. Maybe just a few miles. As the army pushed forward, we would follow them, you see. And of course the terrain we went over that night was just full of shell holes, you know. And those wonderful drivers, they had to drive without lights, see. They could not have lights, you know. And we just, but we were, that was the time we were supposed to sleep. And you can imagine how much sleep we would get, bouncing around in that ambulance and being thrown hither and there. Anyhow, finally we heard that the armistice was going to be signed on a Friday at eleven o’clock. On the eleventh. Or was it the eighteenth? No, it’s the eleventh, wasn’t it, of November. And of course we thought that the fighting would ease off since everybody knew, we were told definitely that’s going to happen, but it didn’t. The shooting, the explosions went on right up until eleven o’clock that day. And we had a stream of wounded were carried in, and walked in, and came on trucks or any other way that they could get them there. And I thought what a pity that they were, and many of them were fatally wounded at that last moment, you know, before the last gun was finally silenced. Anyhow, I remember that I was as busy as I could be with my patients. As they would come in, I was supposed to select them and send them to the area where they were supposed to go. And I remember how automatically I would do that. If they came at night, which they usually did, we usually, I would have to do, I would have to examine them by feeling and by sound more than looking at them, you know. I would quickly feel all over them and see if there was warm blood, you know, coming from somewhere. And I would ask them where they were hurt. Well, if they didn’t answer, I could feel their head if they were bandaged in their head. Feel their pulse. And I would know whether they were conscious or unconscious, you know. But if they were to answer, and I would say, “Do you have pain,” if they said yes, I would immediately tell one of the boys to give them morphine, you know. And then the seriously wounded went one place. And I’d say, “Where are you hit?” Well if they would say the stomach or the chest, or sometimes they’d just wheeze and I knew it was the chest or the head, they were put in a seriously wounded area. But if it was a leg or an arm, then they went to the operating area, where I knew they would be operated on. And, but when eleven o’clock came, I never will forget this, I never thought about how it was going to be because we were too busy and I was too tired. You never heard of battle fatigue, I guess, but I had it. But I heard this, you can hear silence, that’s what I heard. No explosions, no planes humming overhead. So I went to the door of the tent and looked out. And I knew there was something else I was missing. And I almost fainted with the, there was no tremor of the earth. Where for day, during all those weeks up there, night and day, the earth would tremble. Sometimes a lot, and sometimes just barely. But you got used to it. And when that stopped, and there was that dead stillness, and no planes buzzing overhead and no explosions, and the earth is perfectly still, well just to keep from fainting, I went immediately back to work. [laughs] I just couldn’t stand it. Well..

Interviewer: You came on back to this country. And then tell us the story of how you got involved with the Red Cross again and made your way to Wayne County with scholarship.

Duncan: Well, yes. Well, we went up to Germany first with the army of occupation. The following July, I was sent back to the States. Then we were given the choice of being discharged in New York and returning home, or joining the United States Nurse Corps. By that time, they had organized a real army nurse corps. And I chose to join the nurse corps because I had nothing back home waiting for me. And then I went to Fort McHenry in Baltimore, and then Walter Reed in Washington. Then from Washington, I was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky. That’s how I happened to come to Kentucky. Well it was there, in all this experience in Baltimore and in Walter Reed, I was treating wounded veterans. But when we came to Fort Knox, that was peacetime army nursing. And we had appendix operations, and the draftees, I don’t suppose they were draftees then. Anyway, they, the new soldiers, whatever they were called at that time, would get mumps if they hadn’t had it, you know, measles, something like that. Then I realized, too, that I saw something of the married life in, at army units, too. These wives spent their time playing bridge. They were, there was so much backbiting. And they also observed rank, you know. For instance, the colonel’s wife was much more important than the lieutenant’s wife, and so forth. And the−

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Interviewer: Okay. Now will you tell us how you left the camp at Fort Knox?

Duncan: Yes. I retired from the Army Nurse Corps at Fort Knox because I wanted to live in an ordinary community. And I knew that if I stayed in the army, I would eventually marry into it. And so I resigned from the Army Nurse Corps at Fort Knox and went to Louisville, Kentucky. And I had in mind then of doing public health work. I felt like I would get in contact with a variety of people and would enjoy it more than being in an institution, like a hospital. So I went to work for the Visiting Nurse Association in Louisville, which was the nearest thing to public health that I could find there. And in 1921, I believe it was 1921, they told me of a scholarship that was being offered veteran nurses at the University of Louisville. For postgraduate study of one year in public health. With the understanding that we go to work in the mountain sections of the state for one year following graduation. Well, I availed myself of that opportunity. And in 1922, I was assigned to work in Wayne County.

Interviewer: Tell me a little bit about the training that you got, postgraduate training in Louisville.

Duncan: Well, we had, we had the training, the training was planned by the then Dr. McCormack, who was state health commissioner, I believe they called it. And he had employed an experienced public health nurse from New York who came down to help him outline a curriculum for this year’s work at the University of Louisville. Then the local doctors, the local specialist, I forget who it was now, pediatric, for instance, a specialist in pediatrics, in childcare and feeding and so forth, he’d, he lectured on that subject. And other doctors, other doctors, other doctors lectured to us on their specialties. For instance, we had one surgeon, Dr. Abel. And that way, in addition to that, we had some, some nurses who lectured to us on the practical aspects of public health nursing. Visiting in the homes. And taking care of cancer patients who, you know, were, we were, in the Visiting Nurses Association, we were expected to do that. To give, to do dressings, to teach the families how to give baths, to use bedpans, to change beds, and so forth. Anyway, at the end, end of, in the spring of 1922, when I graduated from the University of Louisville, and I had their yearbook with my picture in it and everything, and we took some of our lectures with the senior medical students. They were also expected to know something about public health. And strange to say, one of these students eventually became my son’s father-in-law. [laughs] And his picture is in the same yearbook as mine. But we didn’t, we didn’t know each other then very well. I knew him by sight, and because he was the youngest in my class, and all. But other students sort of kidded him. He was chubby and babyish like, and they would kid him.

Interviewer: This was Francis’ father. Was this Francis Duncan’s father?

Duncan: No. No, no, no, no, no, no. No.

Interviewer: Who was this?

Duncan: You see, I married Clarence Duncan in Wayne County in ’25. But his, he had, I was his second wife. His first wife had died seven years before that. And they had four children. And so I married Clarence and became a stepmother for four children. However, they were, the youngest, was about nine years old. And they had been raised since their mother’s death by some aunts and an uncle there in Monticello. And that was their home. Well we established our home, built a house and established our home very near to that place. And eventually, all of those four children moved in with us because I had planned the house, and we built it big enough to accommodate them. Anyhow, Dr. Duncan is a stepson of mine. And I, I have one son that was born in 1927. And that was my only child. And that was the only one I wanted. Because I felt like Clarence already had all that he could support and send to school and so forth. But I wanted at least son. And as it turned out, luckily it was a son, too.

Interviewer: Well let’s get back to when you first came to Wayne County. When you first came there, can you think of what kind of little office you had, and what kind of transportation they gave you, and what your initial impressions were and everything?

Duncan: Well that first year in 1922, yes I remember the, I had a Model-T Ford. And I saw a picture just the other day of it exactly. It was one of these you had to get out and−

Interviewer: Crank it up.

Duncan: Crank from the front. And you had to be careful that it didn’t break your wrist. And usually it took two to do it. One would do that, and one would sit in the car and advance the spark or something. I don’t remember just how it went now. But we always carried, you know, a tire repair kit with us. And I could take off a tire and repair it and put the tire back on. And so I couldn’t do that today, I can’t do a thing. But we had to do that then because tires were so poor, we were always having punctures, you know. And the roads were so rough. I guess that’s responsible for it. And office wise, was just a little, well, a little corner in a dry goods store that was owned by one of the women there in Monticello. And she allowed me to set up my office in a corner of her store. It was a little offshoot place. So I stayed there. Then I had to arrange for my own living. I rented a room from a widow woman there. And I know there was no running water in the house. She had a well in the yard. And I would go out there and get water.

Interviewer: No sewerage system at that time?

Duncan: No. No sewerage system at all. There would be no water. Everybody had, every house had its own well. And of course had its own privy, too, out in the backyard. There was a city, a town spring. There is a stream, Elkhorn Creek, that flows right through town. And there, it’s a big− and I guess that was the reason Monticello was established there is because they had this town spring. And a lot of people, the poor people, lived down in this lower section along the creek and near this spring, because they had to carry water from the town spring. And you can imagine, you can imagine that these wells soon became polluted. And it wasn’t until I married and came back to Monticello and was living there, maybe, maybe it was ’28 or something like that, the city, well, it was after the big, the Depression was ’29. Well, this was after the Depression. Otherwise, they couldn’t have afforded it, I guess. But then, after the Depression, when labor became cheap and property was cheaper and so forth, the city established a water system. But we had a poor source. The source was really a spring at the edge of town. A big spring. But the water turned out, it was not, the spring was inaccessible to animals or people. And so the water was pure and good. And so everybody that could afford it soon had a water system in their house. Had bathrooms, and sink, and so forth. And then out in the yard, we still didn’t have sewers. But then they were, I think, in some rural sections, they still have, what do they call these−

Interviewer: Cisterns? Where the water runs off the house? Is that what you mean?

Duncan: No, no. I mean, our bathroom, all of our drainage went into this place. And it was supposed to have, to sterilize itself in there. And then run off by little canals into the sand surrounding it. I think in many places they still have those, in rural places where they don’t have… And in places that are not densely populated, they serve very well. So it was some time before Monticello established a sewer system. But eventually, they did. And then everybody that had water in the house, which was not everybody even then, because people weren’t forced to have these if they couldn’t afford it. But almost everybody had, was connected to the sewer system.

Interviewer: Let’s go back to your first, when you started there. You were working for what institution?

Duncan: I was working for the Red Cross in that year. In that year of ’22 and early ’23, I worked for one year following my graduation in the spring of ’22 until the spring of ’23, I was working under the supervision of the Red Cross. The Red Cross had one nurse with an office in Louisville. And she had several, not every county in the state, of course, but she had several nurses working in the mountains of Kentucky. And she came once to see me, and I guess she probably didn’t get around to see the others any oftener than that.

Interviewer: What kind of equipment and tools and pharmaceuticals did you have in your little store office and in your truck, or your car?

Duncan: Well, of course I had, immunizing was a big job of mine. So I had syringes and a little stove. You know, nowadays they have, they give a shot and they throw the syringe away. It’s already sterilized and in a little package and all, and you throw it away. But then, we had to cleanse the needles and the syringes and boil them again and use them again that way. And so I had a little stove, I forget the name. But anyway, I used alcohol as a fuel to, and had a little pan on it and boiled up my needles and syringes after using them.

Interviewer: Now did you actually go into the homes? Did you take your little car down to various homes?

Duncan: I did this immunizing in the schools. I did not do it in the homes. But I would drive my car to the home. I was supposed to keep records of all of the tuberculosis cases in the county. And see them and report on their condition and the number in the family and all that sort of thing like that. Also, crippled children. Although there was very little in ’22 that I could do about them, excepting to spot them and know who they were and their condition.

Interviewer: Did you check on the eye, ear, nose, any handicap? Or basically just−

Duncan: Not eyes or ears. I had no time to do that, and nothing to do about it anyway. It was the indigent children that I was supposed to work with, and not those who could go to their own oculist and hearing. That came later, in my later years, the hearing and eye examinations. But I did examine the throats. But outside of spotting them, there was very little that could be done about them. Of course, I would tell the families if I saw a serious case of adenoids, for instance. Closing of the breathing passages and so forth. But most of them could not take their child to a specialist in Lexington, for instance, or Louisville. And there was no surgeon, no competent surgeon, I must say, that I would recommend at these− although, of course, there were the family doctors of these families. So I would advise them to see their family doctor. And there was one doctor there who I think removed one or two cases of tonsils. But I think he, he wasn’t very successful. And the tonsils returned. The patients were very sick, and so he didn’t, he didn’t undertake to do many tonsillectomies.

Interviewer: Did you find any evidence of these herb and root doctors that might have prescribed some kind of remedy?

Duncan: No, there were no herb doctors there. If there had been, I think the local doctors would have run him off, some way or other.

Interviewer: But they didn’t practice back into the isolated areas?

Duncan: But I think the families somewhere knew, maybe from their own, you know, from their grandparents−

Interviewer: Tradition, oral tradition.

Duncan: −and neighbors, and so on, of herbs, and things that they could use. And did. And sometimes it was better than nothing.

Interviewer: It would at least remove the symptoms, the swelling and things, I guess, temporarily.

Duncan: Yes, well, yes. Of course. They used, you know, when they had bad colds or bronchitis or even pneumonia, they used a lot of chest pads of various kinds. And chest pads were not bad, especially for children. But they had no real, you know, like these herb doctors unauthorized and unlicensed and so forth. All of the doctors there at that time, and there were about four or five of them, had a license, and had been trained at the University of Louisville. I think all of them. Maybe, maybe other universities, I don’t know. I think the University of Louisville. That was before the one in Lexington was−

Interviewer: But you say there was these home remedies that mothers remembered that−

Duncan: Oh, yes, they did. And everybody, since they were so isolated, everybody, when people became sick and they could not get to a doctor or could not afford to, they usually did the best they could. Of course, in the cases, for instance, of even a broken arm, or a leg, they would attempt to just immobilize it, you know, and let it heal. Well, it did, but it was very crippled, you know. And they couldn’t use it, and so forth.

Interviewer: Was there much typhoid fever in the period, that early period?

Duncan: Oh, yes. That was, that was, that was one of the most prevalent. And a danger every year! Many people died of typhoid fever. But that is one thing that, not in the year ’22, because I didn’t stay there long enough. And the health department was not organized then. We had no health organizer. Only, as you know, a local practitioner who received birth and death records from the undertakers and midwives of the county.

Interviewer: How about the midwives? Were there many midwives around in the isolated country area?

Duncan: Oh, yes. They were there, I guess, there must have been, there must have been, in every area, there were midwives.

Interviewer: Out in the community.

Duncan: Oh, yes.

Interviewer: How did these evolve?

Duncan: There must have been a hundred in the whole county, at least.

Interviewer: How did they come about to getting their ability to deliver.

Duncan: Just from watching others, maybe members of their family. You know, their mothers had been midwives, or neighbors had been midwives. And they watched and were drawn in to help. And then they were called upon. Since there was nobody nearby, they were called upon. And the baby did all right. They tied the cord. After that, they were known as midwives. And of course I urged them to, I did talk to many of them about cleanliness, the necessity for it. Because they didn’t realize that the mother would get, many, many young mothers died of puerile fever following childbirth. Because the midwives had inserted their hand into the birth canal and, or used, I don’t know, the only instrument they had was scissors and a cord, to tie the cord. And if the mother had serious hemorrhage, they would try to call a doctor. But often the local doctors could not or would not go, because there was no money that they− They would usually, I know that those doctors would usually ask, “Who’s going to pay for this?” when they were called to a case. They had that−

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