Frontier Nursing Service, inc

Mary Breckinridge founded the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS), originally known as the Kentucky Committee for Mothers and Babies, in rural Leslie County, Ky., in 1925.

A member of a distinguished Kentucky family, Breckinridge began her nursing career in 1907. Following the deaths of her two small children, Breckinridge became a spokeswoman for the Children's Bureau in 1918. After the First World War she affiliated with the American Committee for Devastated France and began to realize the worth of combining nursing and midwifery. Upon returning to the U.S. she continued her education at Teacher's College, Columbia University, taking courses in public health nursing and she later studied midwifery at the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies.

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