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Christmas newsletters on desk

Nurses’ Christmas Newsletters (1928-1947), Geneva, Illinois

Women Della Int-Hout, Frontier Nursing Society, Geneva Community Hospital, Geneva History Museum, memoirs, nursing, women

A presentation by Sue Anderson at the Geneva History Museum, September 2020
Replay of the Zoom presentation on YouTube

77 nurses graduated from a small town hospital’s training program in Geneva, Illinois between 1911 and 1935. They were a close-knit group, and they kept a Christmas newsletter going for 20 years, from 1928 to 1947, through the two tumultuous decades encompassing the Great Depression and World War II.

photo of nurses 1909

As a volunteer cataloger at the Geneva History Museum, I stumbled across this slim packet of newsletters. Once, I started reading them, I couldn’t stop. Here was a vibrant group of women, talking candidly about their careers, their families, and the events of their times.

Photo of nurses 1927

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made my discovery into a recorded slide program. You can watch and listen to it on YouTube, courtesy of the non-profit Geneva History Museum.

Among the women you’ll meet are a nurse who became a horseback riding midwife with the Kentucky Frontier Nursing Service in the 1930’s; nurses who joined the Armed Services during WWII and served at Pearl Harbor and in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge; and the self-reliant nurses married to local farmers, who overcame wartime shortages of farm labor with their 10-year old daughters and sons driving the tractor to feed the pigs and cut the grain!  These stories are America at it’s finest!

photos of farm life in the 1940's

 

 

 

1931-2020 Japanese Beetle Control

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