‘Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery’ Archives
Dr. Martha Ripley: A Life Dedicated to Women and Their Babies
250th from Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery... By SUE HUNTER WEIR Dr. Martha G. Ripley, pioneering doctor in women’s and infant’s healthcare. Founder ofMinneapolis’ Maternity Hospital in 1887. In 1887, Dr. Martha G. Ripley opened the city’s first hospital whose mission was to servepregnant women and their infants. This was at a time when 95% of women had their babies athome. The infant mortality rate in 1885 is only an estimate, and ranges from 250-300 infantdeaths per 1,000 live births. Dr. Ripley dedicated the next 25 years of her life to changing that. Infant mortality rate in 1885:250-300 deaths per 1,000 live births. She wasn’t always successful. Seventy of the people (two adults and 26 infants) who areburied in the cemetery died in the Maternity Hospital. The first burial was 22-year-old AgnesClayton, one of the two adults. She died on April 15, 1887, from puerperal fever, a postpartumbacterial infection. Agnes, like a majority of the women who [...]
No Escaping the Heat
249th from Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery... By SUE HUNTER WEIR The marker for Marie VonDeram, a professional nurse, who wasborn in Christiana (now Oslo) Norway in 1871. She died fromheatstroke on July 17, 1901. She was 30 years old. AnnaJohnson was buried in the same lot in 1911. Their relationship isuncertain. PHOTO: Tim McCall It’s only August and this already feels like a too-long summer. Prolonged temperatures in the nineties. Records being broken. Although the scope and scale are bigger, this isn’t a recent phenomenon. Recorded deaths in Minneapolis due to heat and sunstroke date back to the 1860s and there were undoubtedly many more that went unrecorded before that. The Cemetery’s recorded death due to heatstroke was that of an “unknown German man” on July 16, 1866. Nothing else was known about him.While conventional wisdom claims that it is the very young and the elderly who are most susceptible to the effects of heat, this was not the case for [...]
Remember the Ladies During the Semiquincentennial
248th in the series Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery By SUE HUNTER WEIR Experience Short Buck (1791-1854) was an early New England transplant to what wouldbecome Minnesota. She and her family arrived in the 1850s. PHOTO: Courtesy the family. On March 31, 1776, as her husband and other members of the Constitutional Congress were drafting a new code of laws for a new, independent nation, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband reminding him to “Remember the Ladies.” Two hundred and fifty years later, that is easier said than done. There are 15 women buried in the cemetery who were born in the 18th century. A few of them, primarily those born in New England, are somewhat well-documented but in other cases there is very little record of them. What is remarkable about all of them was their longevity. The average life expectancy for a woman born around the time of the American Revolution was 36. All of these women were alive at the time of the War of 1812, and [...]
