World War II brought us Rosie the Riveter, the fictional female defense worker who represented hundreds of thousands of real women who took jobs in industry to replace men who were called to war. "Rosies" around the country not only relieved a critical labor shortage, they proved that women were capable of taking on what had been considered "men's" work.
While Rosie is a lasting icon of the mid 20th century, there's no similar character to represent the women who ably filled the labor gap during earlier conflicts. Sure, Mary Ludwig Hays became known as Molly Pitcher when she took up the cannon in place of her injured husband at the Battle of Monmouth, but what of the women who didn't serve in combat? For the most part, one has to dig into history books, study roadside markers or scour graveyards to find them.
Warren County's Peggy Warne is a classic example.
A member of one of New Jersey's oldest families, Margrietje Vliet was born sometime between 1746 and 1751 in Six Mile Run (now part of Franklin Township), Somerset County. The Vliet family had already been in the New World for nearly a century by then, having emigrated from Holland to Flatbush, Long Island when the territory was still in the hands of the Dutch.
In her mid twenties, Peggy married Joseph Warne, grandson of one of the original proprietors of East Jersey (for a quick primer on the proprietors, check out this story. Suffice to say, the Warnes had lived in New Jersey for quite some time.). Joseph's father George gave the young couple 130 acres of farmland in what was then Mansfield-Woodhouse, Sussex County, now Broadway, Warren County.
The Warnes had a total of nine children -- six daughters and three sons -- but Peggy still had time to serve as midwife for the community. At the time, helping mothers through childbirth was the exclusive domain of women; doctors didn't handle pregnancies or deliveries, and few physicians lived in the sparsely-populated area, anyway.
When colonists began rebelling against British rule, both the Vliet and Warne families took up the cause. Peggy's father served as a captain under General William "Scotch Willie" Maxwell during the Revolution, while five of her brothers served in various ranks of the New Jersey Militia. While it's not clear whether Joseph Warnes fought in the war, three of his brothers did, leaving little doubt that he supported the patriot cause one way or another.
Peggy couldn't take up arms with so many children at home, but she could do the next best thing. Expanding her existing medical practice, she assumed the role of country doctor, caring for neighbors with ailments well beyond her usual obstetrical duties. According to Hunterdon County historian James Snell, "she not only practiced in her own neighborhood, but kept a horse ready night and day and rode into the surrounding country, through Warren and Hunterdon Counties, undeterred by rain, hail or drifting snow." Some accounts even credit her with tending to soldiers injured in battle, perhaps after they'd returned home.
Whether she did or didn't handle combat wounds, Peggy Warne definitely was an able replacement for doctors who'd left their local practices to join the Continental Army or New Jersey Militia. She's credited as being the first physician at the community now known as Broadway, and she continued her obstetrical practice well into the 1800s. The Phillipsburg chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution is named in her honor.
Showing posts with label physicians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label physicians. Show all posts
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Entrepreneurial pluck: Dr. Rose Faughnan and Passaic Private Hospital
Long-time readers might remember our article on Dr. Rose Faughnan, the Ellis Island physician who was, herself, a classic example of the American immigrant success story. The daughter of Irish immigrants who came to the United States during the Potato Famine, she wasn't the only child in her family to achieve professional success. Among her siblings were a doctor, a lawyer and a teacher, demonstrating how quickly a family could rise to high achievement here.
A few weeks after we published the story, a Faughnan family member contacted me to share additional information on her remarkable aunt, whom the family calls Dr. Rose. It turns out that after leaving Ellis Island, she took a somewhat entrepreneurial approach to practicing medicine.
It wasn't easy for women doctors to find jobs in the early 20th century, and many found civil service work in institutions like the Public Health Service or city or state governments. Even there they might find bias against them, both institutional and from colleagues. At the time, women were not eligible to take the exam to earn a commission from the PHS, so they were effectively restricted from hospital duty. Instead, they would be relegated to doing the initial exams on immigrants, determining which ones needed further examination before being allowed to enter the country. These ‘six second exams’ were necessary and important but less desirable as a work assignment, given the rigor of seeing as many as a few thousand people a day for a cursory look.
As I found from later research, Dr. Rose had been deemed "feministic" by one of her Ellis Island supervisors, likely because she wanted more challenging work. She resigned from the PHS in 1922 and continued her studies at the New York Lying-In Hospital, now the obstetrics and gynecology department of Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Like many strong-minded people before and since, Dr. Rose apparently decided to create her own career path, rather than relying on another employer. After leaving the Lying-In, she started a private hospital in Harrison but was soon persuaded by several patients to move her practice to Passaic. The community’s needs were acute: while the population was growing, only two general hospitals were available to serve residents there.
Dr. Rose bought a large house on High Street in Passaic and renovated it for use as a 12-bed hospital. Originally taking the overflow from Passaic General and St. Mary’s Hospitals, the facility was open to all physicians, with nurses on duty 24 hours a day. Eventually, as Passaic Beth Israel opened and the other hospitals expanded, Passaic Private focused more on maternity and chronic cases. A 1940 advertisement in the Passaic Medical Society Journal described the facility as “Ideal facilities for the care of invalids, chronic and convalescent cases, medical or surgical. Home cooking. Private, semi-private and ward cases. No contagious or tubercular cases accepted. Under State License.”
I haven’t been able to trace the fate of Passaic Private past that 1940 advertisement, though the Passaic city historian confirmed that the building itself was still there as recently as ten years ago. Dr. Rose died in 1947, with no mention of the hospital in her obituary in the Journal of the American Medical Association. I went to check out the property and found an empty, grassy lot. The only evidence of the building’s past existence is a stub of walkway that might have led to the front door.
It seems that the legacy of Dr. Rose’s work in Passaic is invisible to those who don’t know her story, but it’s no doubt evident in the lives she improved through her care, and the descendants of those she treated.
A few weeks after we published the story, a Faughnan family member contacted me to share additional information on her remarkable aunt, whom the family calls Dr. Rose. It turns out that after leaving Ellis Island, she took a somewhat entrepreneurial approach to practicing medicine.
 |
| Courtesy Rose F. Stuart |
As I found from later research, Dr. Rose had been deemed "feministic" by one of her Ellis Island supervisors, likely because she wanted more challenging work. She resigned from the PHS in 1922 and continued her studies at the New York Lying-In Hospital, now the obstetrics and gynecology department of Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Like many strong-minded people before and since, Dr. Rose apparently decided to create her own career path, rather than relying on another employer. After leaving the Lying-In, she started a private hospital in Harrison but was soon persuaded by several patients to move her practice to Passaic. The community’s needs were acute: while the population was growing, only two general hospitals were available to serve residents there.
Dr. Rose bought a large house on High Street in Passaic and renovated it for use as a 12-bed hospital. Originally taking the overflow from Passaic General and St. Mary’s Hospitals, the facility was open to all physicians, with nurses on duty 24 hours a day. Eventually, as Passaic Beth Israel opened and the other hospitals expanded, Passaic Private focused more on maternity and chronic cases. A 1940 advertisement in the Passaic Medical Society Journal described the facility as “Ideal facilities for the care of invalids, chronic and convalescent cases, medical or surgical. Home cooking. Private, semi-private and ward cases. No contagious or tubercular cases accepted. Under State License.”
I haven’t been able to trace the fate of Passaic Private past that 1940 advertisement, though the Passaic city historian confirmed that the building itself was still there as recently as ten years ago. Dr. Rose died in 1947, with no mention of the hospital in her obituary in the Journal of the American Medical Association. I went to check out the property and found an empty, grassy lot. The only evidence of the building’s past existence is a stub of walkway that might have led to the front door.
It seems that the legacy of Dr. Rose’s work in Passaic is invisible to those who don’t know her story, but it’s no doubt evident in the lives she improved through her care, and the descendants of those she treated.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
The Luck of the Irish at Ellis Island
A while back I noted that the lion's share of Ellis Island is, in fact, in New Jersey. The man-made South Side of the island was constructed to house the immigrant hospital where tens of thousands of recent arrivals were nursed to health in anticipation of their eventual admission to the United States.
Mentioning Ellis Island usually raises thoughts of those immigrants' travails, but as a volunteer for the National Park Service and its non-profit partner Save Ellis Island, I share the story of the hospital's dedicated staff of Public Health Service physicians and nurses. It wasn't until I started researching the women doctors who practiced there that I found an instance where the two intersected: a child of immigrants who showed how quickly American families can rise from humble immigrant roots to make a positive impact on our country.
Rose Cecilia Faughnan was born on August 23, 1873 in Newark, the daughter of Irish immigrants, Timothy Faughnan and Mary Farley Faughnan. While the year of her mother's crossing is unclear from census records, her father came to the United States as a young boy in 1847. It's pretty safe to assume that both sets of Rose's grandparents were protecting their children from the devastation of the potato famine ravaging the country in the late 1840s.
The Faughnans had five other children besides Rose: Timothy, John, Elizabeth, Marie and Anna. By 1900, Mary had died and apparently the 27 year old Rose remained in the household to care for her siblings and father. Ten years later, she's listed on the census as a medical student, but she wasn't the only one with ambitions. Her brother John is listed as a law student, her brother Timothy as a dentist, and sister Anna as a teacher. Clearly, they'd been encouraged in their studies and prompted to do the most they could with their intelligence and capitalize on every opportunity.
By 1914, Rose had earned her degree from the Medical College of Baltimore and was the second female doctor to practice at the Public Health Service (PHS) hospital on Ellis Island. Private sector employment was still difficult for women physicians to secure, but the PHS understood their value in an environment where many female immigrants were both suspicious and fearful of men. The doctors at Ellis were required to wear uniforms, an intimidating sight for people who didn't speak English and may have been escaping persecution from the military in their home countries. Dr. Faughnan and her fellow women doctors (up to four by 1924) were a calming influence and could perform the sometimes invasive examinations that were necessary to determine immigrant patients' medical status.
After leaving the PHS and Ellis Island, Dr. Faughnan served the Newark Public Schools and St. James Hospital in the Ironbound. She died of pneumonia and bladder cancer on March 26, 1947, having made a positive impact on thousands of people during her medical career. It's a safe assumption that many Americans wouldn't be here today had she not diagnosed, treated and cured their immigrant forebears.
I was reminded of Dr. Faughnan and her parents after reading an essay written by a more recent immigrant. Barry O'Donovan noted that while the Irish have been beset by some devastatingly bad circumstances over the centuries, there are those who turn misfortune into success through hard work and persistence. The luck of the Irish, it seems, isn't so much lucky as it is well earned.
Mentioning Ellis Island usually raises thoughts of those immigrants' travails, but as a volunteer for the National Park Service and its non-profit partner Save Ellis Island, I share the story of the hospital's dedicated staff of Public Health Service physicians and nurses. It wasn't until I started researching the women doctors who practiced there that I found an instance where the two intersected: a child of immigrants who showed how quickly American families can rise from humble immigrant roots to make a positive impact on our country.
 |
| Dr. Rose Faughnan in a 1922 passport application photo. |
The Faughnans had five other children besides Rose: Timothy, John, Elizabeth, Marie and Anna. By 1900, Mary had died and apparently the 27 year old Rose remained in the household to care for her siblings and father. Ten years later, she's listed on the census as a medical student, but she wasn't the only one with ambitions. Her brother John is listed as a law student, her brother Timothy as a dentist, and sister Anna as a teacher. Clearly, they'd been encouraged in their studies and prompted to do the most they could with their intelligence and capitalize on every opportunity.
By 1914, Rose had earned her degree from the Medical College of Baltimore and was the second female doctor to practice at the Public Health Service (PHS) hospital on Ellis Island. Private sector employment was still difficult for women physicians to secure, but the PHS understood their value in an environment where many female immigrants were both suspicious and fearful of men. The doctors at Ellis were required to wear uniforms, an intimidating sight for people who didn't speak English and may have been escaping persecution from the military in their home countries. Dr. Faughnan and her fellow women doctors (up to four by 1924) were a calming influence and could perform the sometimes invasive examinations that were necessary to determine immigrant patients' medical status.
After leaving the PHS and Ellis Island, Dr. Faughnan served the Newark Public Schools and St. James Hospital in the Ironbound. She died of pneumonia and bladder cancer on March 26, 1947, having made a positive impact on thousands of people during her medical career. It's a safe assumption that many Americans wouldn't be here today had she not diagnosed, treated and cured their immigrant forebears.
I was reminded of Dr. Faughnan and her parents after reading an essay written by a more recent immigrant. Barry O'Donovan noted that while the Irish have been beset by some devastatingly bad circumstances over the centuries, there are those who turn misfortune into success through hard work and persistence. The luck of the Irish, it seems, isn't so much lucky as it is well earned.
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