The Most Important Factor in Public Health Work: From Visiting Nurses to Public Health Nurses in Forsyth County, NC, 1905 - 1930
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.1201.18116Abstract
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References
1 Jesse Scales, “A Successful Experiment,” American Journal of Nursing 1.10 (July 1901): 731. 2 “‘Forsyth Connects’ Connects Families with in-home Visits,” Novant Health Foundation, May 5, 2017, https://supportnovanthealth.org/forsyth-connects-help-mothers-acrosscounty/#:~:text=Reynolds%20Charitable%20Trust%20and%20The,follow%2Dup%20visits%20as%20appropriate. Accessed 1 August 2024. This program was modeled on the Family Connects Durham program started in 2008 with financial assistance from The Duke Endowment. https://www.ccfhnc.org/programs/family-connectsdurham/ Accessed 1 August 2024. 3 “Doing A Great Work,” The Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 14 September 1915, 4. 4 “Annual Meeting Wayside Workers,” Winston Salem Journal, 12 March 1916, 6. 5 Arelene W. Keeling, Michelle C. Hehman, and John C. Kirchgessner, History of Professional Nursing in the United States: Toward a Culture of Health (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2018). 6Darlene Clark Hine, “The Ethel Johns Report: Black Women in the Nursing Profession,” The Journal of Negro History 67.3 (Autumn 1982): 212-28; Darlene Clark Hine, Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-1950 (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989); Sonya J. Grypma, “Profile of a Leader: Unearthing Ethel Johns’ ‘Buried’ Commitment to Racial Equality, 1925,” Nursing Leadership 16.4 (December 2003): 39-47. 7 Marian Moser Jones and Matilda Saines, “The Eighteen of 1918-1919: Black Nurses and the Great Flu Pandemic in the United States,” American Journal of Public Health 109.6 (June 2019): 482. 8 Sandra B. Lewenson, “Hidden and Forgotten: Being Black in the American Red Cross Town and Country Nursing Service, 1912-1948,” Nursing History Review 27.1 (January 2019): 15-30. 9 Patricia D’Antonio and Jean C. Whelan, “Counting Nurses: The Power of Historical Census Data,” Journal of Clinical Nursing 19 (October 18, 2009): Table 1.
Editorial Comment, “Our Winter Journeyings,” The American Journal of Nursing 2.8 (May 1902): (quote p. 643); Rose M. Ehrenfeld, R.N., “The Evolution of Public Health Nursing,” The American Journal of Nursing 20.1 (October 1919): 14-18.
Mary E. Thornton, “Official Reports of Societies in Charge of Mary E. Thornton,” The American Journal of Nursing 3.1 (October 1902): 54-65.
“Official Reports of Societies,” The American Journal of Nursing 3.7 (April 1903): 564-66. Other states quickly followed suit: by 1914, 40 of 48 states had similar licensing laws.
“Letters to the Editors,” The American Journal of Nursing 3.9 (June 1903): 742-43; “Hospital and Training School Items,” The American Journal of Nursing 3.10 (July 1903): 790-99.
“Official Reports,” The American Journal of Nursing 5.8 (May 1905): 531.
“Official Reports,” The American Journal of Nursing 5.10 (July 1905): 712-13. This school was in Western Greensboro.
“Editorial Comment,” The American Journal of Nursing 7.7 (April 1907): 510.
“Editorial Comment,” The American Journal of Nursing 7.7 (April 1907): 505.
Freedmen’s Hospital School of Nursing, “Our History,” Last revised October 2015. http://www.fhsnac.org/about.html Accessed 11 July 2023.
“North Carolina Nursing History,” https://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/biographies/ncacgn Accessed 3 August 2023. The four earliest schools for Black women were Spelman Seminary in Atlanta (1886); Dixie Hospital
Training School in Hampton, VA (1891); Provident Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago (1891); and Tuskegee
Institute Nurse Training School (1892).
“Martha Minerva Franklin,” Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame, https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/marthaminerva-franklin Accessed 23 August 2023.
Marjorie N. Feld, Lilliam Wald: A Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Elizabeth Fee and Liping Bu, “The Origins of Public Health Nursing: The Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service,” American Journal of Public Health 100.7 (July 2010): 1206-07.
Jesse Scales, “A Successful Experiment,” American Journal of Nursing 1.10 (July 1901): 731. “Colored Nurses at Work,” Raleigh News and Observer, 5 April 1908, 13.
Dr. Watson Smith Rankin was the first State Health Officer. Bulletin of the North Carolina State Board of Health, XXVII (April 1912): 11-12.
Minutes of Meeting, April 3, 1911. Forsyth Country Department of Public Health, 799 Highland Avenue, Winston Salem, NC [hereafter referred to as FCDPH archives].
Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910: Statistics for North Carolina (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914), 569.
Census, Statistics for North Carolina, 569, 589-91; RJR Chronology, Richard J. Reynolds Archives, Reynolda Caron, S. M. (2025). The Most Important Factor in Public Health Work: From Visiting Nurses to Public Health Nurses in Forsyth County, NC, 1905 -1930. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 12(01). 19-42.
For more on residential segregation in Winston Salem, see Elizabeth A. Herbin-Triant, “Race and Class Friction in North Carolina Neighborhoods: How Campaigns for Residential Segregation Law Divided Middling and Elite Whites in Winston-Salem and North Carolina’s Countryside, 1912-1915,” Journal of Southern History 83.3 (2017): 531-72.
Minutes of Board of Health Meeting, 8 May 1911; Minutes of the Board of Health Meeting, 16 January 1912; Minutes of Board of Health Meeting, 9 October 1912; Minutes of Board of Health, 10 November 1913; and Minutes of Board of Health Meeting, 12 January 1915, FCDPH Archives; “Splendid Review of Health Work in Forsyth County During the Past Year Contained in Report of Dr. A.C. Bulla,” Winston-Salem Journal, 5 January 1919, 5.
Report, 1931, State Archives in Raleigh, History of Early Public Health Nursing in Forsyth County, https://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/history-early-public-health-nursing-forsyth-county Accessed 30 November 2021. (October 1919): 14-18; Report, 1931, State Archives in Raleigh, History of Early Public Health Nursing in Forsyth County, https://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/history-early-public-health-nursing-forsyth-county Accessed 30 November 2021.
“Tells How People Are Blinded by Wood Alcohol,” The Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 25 April 1914, 10.
“Doing A Great Work,” The Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 14 September 1915, 4.
Biennial Report of the North Carolina State Board of Health, 16 (1915-1916). State Archives in Raleigh, History of Early Public Health Nursing in Forsyth County, https://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/history-early-publichealth-nursing-forsyth-county Accessed 30 November 2021.
Biennial Report of the North Carolina State Board of Health 16 (1915-1916); “Doing A Great Work,” The Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 14 September 1915, 4.
Report, 1931, State Archives in Raleigh, History of Early Public Health Nursing in Forsyth County, https://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/history-early-public-health-nursing-forsyth-county. Accessed 30 November 2023.
Biennial Report of the North Carolina State Board of Health, 16 (1915-1916). (October 1919): 14-18.
“Public Health Nursing Service for this State,” The Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 27 March 1916, 6. “First State Meeting of Public Health Nurses,” The Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 5 April 1916, 9. “Discussion of Children’s Societies, Industrial Hygiene and the Juvenile Courts,” The Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 12 May 1916, 2.
“The Notifiable Diseases: Prevalence during 1916 in Cities of 10,000 to 100,000,” Public Health Reports 32.34 (August 24, 1917): 1346-77; “County Physician’s Monthly Report,” The Western Sentinel, 2 May 1916, 1. “Dr. Kinyoun Given 60 Days Additional Leave of Absence,” Winston-Salem Journal, 8 August 1916, 1; David M. Moren and Anthony S. Fauci, “The Forgotten Forefather: Joseph James Kinyoun and the Founding of the National Institutes of Health,” mBio 3.4 (2012): e00139-12. 37
“Charotte Rhone,” North Carolina Nursing History, https://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/biographies/charlotte-rhone. Accessed 4 August 2024; Pheobe Pollitt, “Charlotte Rhone: Nurse, Welfare Worker, and Entrepreneur,” American Journal of Nursing 115.2 (2015): 66-70. https://www.digitalforsyth.org/photos/stories/early-hospitals, Accessed 28 October 2018. https://www.digitalforsyth.org/photos/stories/early-hospitals, Accessed 28 October 2018. “The Slater Hospital,” The Union Republican, 10 August 1905, 6.
Herbin-Triant, “Race and Class Friction,” 535. For more on Black property ownership in North Carolina, see Robert C. Kenzer, Enterprising Southerners: Black Economic Success in North Carolina, 1865-1915 (Charlottesville: University of Virgina Press, 1997), 24-27.
“Segregate Negroes in East Winston,” Winston-Salem Journal, 14 June 1912, 1; “Segregation in Whole City,” Winston-Salem Journal, 6 July 1912, 1; “Race Segregation,” The Union Republican, 20 June 1912, 6. White elites did not have the same property value concerns because Blacks could not afford to move into wealthy neighborhoods.
State v. Darnell, 166 N.C. 300, 81 S.E. 338 (NC 1914); “Negro Wins Segregation Suit,” The Mountain Scout, 22 April 1914, 2. “Segregation Law,” The Union Republican, 16 April 1914, 1. The Supreme Court struck down residential segregation ordinances based on citizens’ rights to own and sell property. See Buchanan v. Warley 245 U.S. 60 (1917).
J.J. Kinyoun to the Board of Aldermen through the Health Committee, 2 October 1916, FCDPH. “Matters Handled by the Winston Aldermen,” The Western Sentinel, 31 January 1911, 5; “No Action was Taken,” Winston-Salem Journal, 4 March 1911, 1; “Slater Hospital Re-Opened,” The Union Republican, 9 March 1911, 6; “Benefit Concert for the Slater Hospital,” Winston-Salem Journal, 19 May 1911, 3. “New Chairman Hospital Board,” Winston-Salem Journal, 31 May 1913, 5.
“Hospital for Colored People,” The Union Republican, 8 May 1913, 6.
City of Winston-Salem Government Meeting Notes, 3 March 1914, 11-73, 27 August 1915, 11-382, and 28 January 1916, 11-445 https://www.cityofws.org/DocumentCenter/View/2718/Winston-Salem-1913-to-1919-PDF, Accessed 15 October 2021; “Hospital for Colored People,” The Union Republican, 8 May 1913, 6; “New Chairman Hospital Board,” Winston-Salem Journal, 31 May 1913, 5; “Richard Joshua Reynolds Had Interest of People,” Winston-Salem Journal, 14 May 1924, 6.
“Colored Physicians Want Operating Room,” The Sentinel, 18 December 1915, 10.
City of Winston-Salem Government Meeting Notes, 3 March 1914, (11-73); 27 August 1915 (11-382); 28 January 1916 (11-445) https://www.cityofws.org/DocumentCenter/View/2718/Winston-Salem-1913-to-1919-PDF Accessed 15 October 2021.
Minutes of Forsyth County Board of Health, 24 January 1916, FCDPH archives.
Minutes of Forsyth Country Board of Health, 4 June 1916, FCDPH archives. 38
Caron, S. M. (2025). The Most Important Factor in Public Health Work: From Visiting Nurses to Public Health Nurses in Forsyth County, NC, 1905 -1930. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 12(01). 19-42.
“Dr. Kinyoun Given 60 Days Additional Leave of Absence,” Winston-Salem Journal, 8 August 1916, 1; David M. Moren and Anthony S. Fauci, “The Forgotten Forefather: Joseph James Kinyoun and the Founding of the National Institutes of Health,” mBio 3.4 (2012): e00139-12.
“Nice Isolation Hospital Ready,” Winston-Salem Journal, 25 May 1916, 8.
J.J. Kinyoun to the Health Committee of the Board of Aldermen, 7 July 1916, FCDPH.
J.J. Kinyoun to the Health Committee of the Board of Aldermen, 7 July 1916, FCDPH; Percy Powers, “Public Health Nursing in Winston-Salem,” Winston-Salem Journal, 1 May 1930, 16.
Mary Briscoe was the first Black woman to pass the NC State Boards in June of 1916. Briscoe graduated from St. Agnes School of Nursing in Raleigh. The State Boards that year took place in Winston-Salem. Local press coverage seemed supportive of her. John J. Green wrote a letter to the editor praising her: “She is a deserving woman from every view. Her spirit seems to be in keeping with the spirit of the school she represented.” “First Colored Nurse to Pass State Board of N. Carolina,” Winston-Salem Journal, 1 June 1916, 2. Powers, “Public Health Nursing.”
Sixteenth Biennial Report of the North Carolina State Board of Health, 1915-1916 (Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton Printing Co., 1917), 14.
Benjamin Earle Washburn, A History of the North Carolina State Board of Health, 1877-1925 (1966), 6, 48. When Rockefeller turned his attention to international hookworm eradication programs, he looked to the NC model as the way to proceed. See Anne-Emanuelle Birn, “Revolution, the Scatological Way: The Rockefeller Foundation’s Hookworm Campaign in 1920s Mexico,” in Disease in the History of Latin America, edited by Diego Armus (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 158-82.
Minutes of Board of Health Meeting, 4 June 1916, FCDPH; “Joint Campaign Will Be Waged,” The Winston-Salem Journal, 15 June 1916, 5; Sixteenth Biennial Report of the North Carolina State Board of Health, 1915-1916 (Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton Printing Co., 1917), 11.
J.J. Kinyoun to the Board of Aldermen Through the Health Committee, 1 August 1916, FCDPH; “Report as Made by County Health Officer,” The Twin-City Sentinel, 4 September 1916, 9.
“Miss Crandall to Lecture,” The Twin-City Sentinel, 26 February 1916, 10.
Author survey using newspapers.com. “What Durham Has Done,” The Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 13 March 1916, 4.
“Interest Growing in ‘Baby Week’ Movement,” Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 2 March 1916, 7. “‘Baby Week’ Opens Saturday,” Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 3 March 1916, 2.
J.J. Kinyoun to the Board of Aldermen through the Health Committee, 1 August 1916, FCDPH. 39
J.J. Kinyon to the Board of Aldermen Through the Health Committee, 2 October 1916. Forsyth County Board of Health, FDCPH Archives.
Annual Meeting Wayside Workers,” Winston Salem Journal, 12 March 1916, 6.
“Interest Growing in ‘Baby Week’ Movement,” Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 2 March 1916, 7. “What Durham Has Done,” The Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 13 March 1916, 4. In Durham, the city hired one white and one African American public health nurse; the school board hired one; the Welfare Club of West Durham hired one through charitable donations; MLIC hired one for their subscribers; Durham Hosiery Mill hired one; and Durham Episcopal Church hired one as the “Deaf Mute Welfare Worker.”
“What Durham Has Done,” The Twin-City Sentinel, 13 March 1916, 4.
The Wayside Workers raised money from the Moravian Home church, Mission Band, Helping Hand Circle, Willing Workers, Anti-Cants (Sunday School class of girls), and Men’s Bible class of Home Sunday school. “Annual Meeting Wayside Workers,” Winston Salem Journal, 12 March 1916, p. 6.
“Annual Meeting Wayside Workers,” Winston Salem Journal, 12 March 1916, p. 6; “Thought for the Day,” The Twin-City Sentinel, 25 March 1916, p. 4.
Flexner read this paper before the Conference of Charities in 1915. Emily C. Covert, “Is Nursing a Profession?” The American Journal of Nursing 18.2 (November 1917): 107-08.
Covert later served in France during World War I in Unit 23 of the US Nursing Corps. After the war she moved back to her home state of Montana, became the Superintendent of the Labbitt Hospital in Hardin, Montana, and in 1922 won election as the President of the Montana State Nurses Association. “Society Events,” The Billings Gazette, 20 April 1919, 7; “Hardin Now Boasts Another Hospital,” The Montana Record Herald, 15 September 1921, 10; “Two Billings Nurses Get Leading Places in State Association,” The Billings Gazette, 14 July 1921, 1. Covert, “Is Nursing a Profession?” 108-09. (October 1919): 14.
Elizabeth A.P. Vane and Sanders Marble, “Contributions of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in World War I,” Soins: La Revue de Référence Infirmière (June 2014). Army Nurse Corps Association, https://eanca.org/History/Topics-in-ANC-History/Contributions-of-the-US-Army-Nurse-Corps-in-WWI Accessed 17 July 2017.
The military made an exception during the 1918 Influenza epidemic and brought in Black nurses to Camp Sherman, which had the highest mortality rate, to care for both white and Black soldiers. These nurses slept in separate quarters. Jones and Saines, “The Eighteen of 1918-1919,” 878.
“County Tuberculosis Sanatoria Coming,” Twin-City Sentinel, 4 March 1916, 13.
Minutes of Board of Health Meeting, 24 January 1916, FCDPH archives.
“Splendid Review of Health Work in Forsyth County During the Past Year Contained in Report of Dr. A.C. Bulla,” Winston-Salem Journal, 5 January 1919, 5.
“Statistical Report on County Health Work,” The Western Sentinel, 18 July 1919, 3. 40
Minutes of Board of Health Meeting, 4 June 1916, FCDPH archives.
“Intensive Campaign for Care of the Teeth,” The Sentinel, 25 November 1922, 10.
For a discussion of dentists’ connection to public school clinics, see Alyssa Picard, Making the American Mouth: Dentists and Public Health in the Twentieth Century (Newark: Rutgers University Press, 2013), Chapters 1 & 2. The American Dental Association endorsed dental clinics in public schools until dentistry gained coverage in private Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. At that point, the ADA joined the AMA in opposition to school clinics and national insurance plans. See Picard, Making the American Mouth, Chapter 4.
“City Health Officer Says Hogs Must Go,” Winston-Salem Journal, 9 May 1920, 4.
“County Doing Much Work Among Cripples,” The Sentinel, 25 November 1922, 9.
R.L. Carlton, Health Officer, to the Board of Aldermen through the Health Committee, 1 April 1918, FCPHD archives.
“Laws Providing for the Separation and Accommodation of White and Colored Passengers Upon Street Cars and for Other Purposes,” Twin-City Sentinel, 9 March 1918, 9. Same article ran in Winston Salem Journal, 10 March 1918, 24 and Union Republican, 14 March 1918, 7.
Minutes of Board of Health Meeting, 7 October 1918, FCDPH archives.
Minutes of Board of Health, 28 October 1918, FCDPH archives.
The Wayside Workers raised money from the Moravian Home church, Mission Band, Helping Hand Circle, Willing Workers, Anti-Cants (Sunday School class of girls), and Men’s Bible class of Home Sunday school. “Annual Meeting Wayside Workers,” Winston Salem Journal, 12 March 1916, 6.
“Red Cross Nurse for the Rural Districts,” Winston-Salem Journal, 10 March 1920, 7. “Annual Meeting Wayside Workers,” Winston Salem Journal, 12 March 1916, 6; “Thought for the Day,” The Twin-City Sentinel, 25 March 1916, 4.
Ehrenfeld, R.N., “Public Health Nursing,” 15-16. Cleone Hobbs of Clinton; Birdie Dunn of Raleigh; Cora Beam of Fallstone; Kate Livinston of Wagram; Flora Ray of Sanford; and Mrs. H.P. Guffy of Statesville. “A History of Public Health Nursing,” https://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/education/public-health, Accessed 19 April 2022.
Report, 1931, State Archives in Raleigh, History of Early Public Health Nursing in Forsyth County, https://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/history-early-public-health-nursing-forsyth-county Accessed 30 November 2021.
“Nursing News and Announcements,” The American Journal of Nursing 25.7 (July 1925): 618. 41 “Christmas Seal Canvass,” The Western Sentinel, 2 December 1921, 1; “Financial Report: Christmas Seal Fund,” The Twin-City Sentinel, 25 November 1922, 17.
“City of Winston-Salem Government Meeting Notes: 1920-1929,” 8. https://www.cityofws.org/DocumentCenter/View/2713/Winston-Salem-1920-to-1929-PDF Accessed 1 August 1923.
Although the paper did not cite her name, Annie Keith Brown passed the NCBON exam in 1922 and her short biographical entry cites Winston Salem as the only place she worked. “NCACGN Member Biographies,” https://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/biographies/ncacgn/members Accessed 2 August 1923.
“Fine Record in Nursing Effort: Achievements of Colored Nurse During May,” Winston-Salem Journal, 5 June 1922, 1.
“Nissen Buys Property from First Presbyterian Church,” Winston-Salem Journal, 22 April 1926, 13. “Small Number of Deeds Were Filed,” Winston-Salem Journal, 14 October 1924; “NCACGN Member
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