Bethenia Owens-Adair, Pioneer Doctor of the Midwest

The following biographical sketch is based on information from more than one source. Some details were found to be conflicting, and it was not always possible to be certain of the exact sequence of events but, in general, this should provide a relatively accurate overview of the life of one of the Northwest United States’ most interesting women.

Bethenia Angeline Owens was born in 1840 in Van Buren County, Missouri, the daughter of Thomas Owens and Sarah Damron. [Sarah was the daughter of Moses Damron and Jennie Mullins who were originally from Pike County, Kentucky and later moved to Illinois. They decided to return to Kentucky but took ill and died. Moses managed to make arrangements for their children, including Sarah, to return to Kentucky.]

In 1843, the Owens family left Independence, Missouri, and, following the Oregon Trail, eventually settled on the Clatsop Plains, an area southwest of Astoria in northwestern Oregon. Bethenia rapidly adjusted to frontier life. She was a tomboy and constantly tested her strength against that of an older brother.

She, like most frontier children, held responsibilities within her family, including the care of younger siblings. She looked after them when her mother was busy and nursed them back to health when they were sick. She recalled that it was seldom that she did not have a child in her arms.

When she was twelve, she developed a crush on a young bachelor who boarded with the family while conducting a school for a few months. When he left, he ruffled Bethenia’s hair and said to her mother, “I guess I’ll take this one with me.” Her mother replied, “all right, she is such a tomboy I can never make a girl of her, anyway.” Bethenia fled in tears.

Thomas Owens flourished and, about 1852, moved the family to southern Oregon where he took a larger homestead in the Umpqua Valley. Bethenia was thirteen when Legrand Henderson Hill, one of her father’s former farmhands asked for her hand in marriage. He was in his early twenties. Her parents gave their consent. It was not unusual for a girl to marry early.

The marriage took place on Bethenia’s fourteenth birthday, 4 May 1854. It was not a good marriage. They first lived with his parents then Hill bought a farm in Yreka, California. However, Legrand could not make payment on the property and eventually lost it. This was the pattern that he followed. He seemed to not take responsibilities seriously. He would stop work to go hunting.

In 1856, a son, George J., was born. Yet, they continued living hand to mouth. Bethenia and the baby became very ill when Legrand had gone into the brick business with a man he had just met. Her parents came to take her and the baby to their home where Bethenia slowly recovered. She returned to Legrand in an attempt to salvage her marriage but, after a quarrel that ended with Legrand striking Bethenia and throwing the infant on the bed, she took the baby and returned to her parents’ home. Although it was a time when divorce was a blot on a woman’s reputation, she proceeded to divorce Legrand Hill in 1859. She vowed to never again give up the Owens name. She was determined to make her own way and realized that she would need an education. So would her son.

She sat in on classes with the young children in the nearby school. Although she continued to take part in the chores as expected of her, she never neglected her schoolwork. She rapidly progressed through the various levels. She arose early taking an icy bath and exercising vigorously before breakfast. She worked late in the evening on sewing and ironing for neighbors in order to earn money needed for her and George’s clothing.

In the summer of 1861, she decided that she would become a teacher, gathered 16 children and taught them for three months. Any extra money went into a savings jar. There were times when she would feel discouraged, but she would regain her confidence in short order. Eventually, she was teaching in Astoria where she bought a house. When Legrand suddenly appeared, she feared that he would attempt to take George from her. She left Astoria to visit her brothers and sisters in Roseburg.

Deciding to sell the house in Astoria, she leased a small store and, relying upon her sewing skills, opened a small milliner’s shop. When a competing milliner, a professionally trained one, opened a shop she realized that she could not compete with her. Bethenia talked a banker into giving her a loan to study millinery design. Leaving George in the care of a minister and his wife, she traveled to San Francisco.  She spent the winter of 1868 working hard learning not only how to make hats but how to run a business. When she returned to Roseburg she opened a new store, with the town’s first display window, and prospered.

George had decided to become a doctor and, at age 16, was enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley. Bethenia found that she was lonely and needed more to occupy her time and her mind. She took advantage of her natural ability to care for the sick, so she informed the local doctor that she would be available for night duty on serious cases. These experiences kindled a desire to obtain a medical degree. She confided in the sympathetic local doctor who encouraged her and lent her some of his medical books. She spent her evenings avidly studying anatomy on her own in preparation for medical school. Leaving her successful business in the hands of a younger sister, she traveled east where she enrolled in the Philadelphia Eclectic School of Medicine. An exceptional student, she graduated a year later with the only certification granted to women at the time, a quasi-medical degree as a “bath doctor.”

In 1873, she returned to Oregon where she chose a community smaller than Roseburg to set up practice. After successfully surviving challenges as a woman doctor, she closed the Roseburg shop and she and her sister moved to Portland. There, she began to consider such political questions as temperance and woman suffrage. She wrote articles that were published in the area newspapers, and she began to establish a reputation that could have hurt her medical career, but her Portland practice flourished.  During this period, she adopted a young girl whose poverty-stricken family had requested medical care for another child. When Bethenia saw Mattie, a sickly little girl, her heart went out to her, and she offered to adopt her. The family permitted Mattie to be raised by Bethenia.

When George turned nineteen, Bethenia entered him in the Medical Department at Willamette University, Oregon, from which he graduated two years later. She set George up in the pharmaceutical business. She had paid for the education of her son and sister and hoped to further her medical education. Liquidating her assets, she realized eight thousand dollars which she felt would be sufficient for her needs for the next three years. Armed with letters of recommendation from several influential people, she hoped to attend Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Upon her arrival, she visited Dr. Hannah Longshore, one of the first graduates of the Women’s Medical School of Philadelphia and a sister of the founder of the Eclectic school that Bethenia had previously attended. Dr. Longshore felt that she would have little chance of being accepted by Jefferson but suggested that she see Professor Gross saying that if anyone could get her admitted, he would be the one.

Gross, considered to be one of the greatest surgeons in the country, advised her to apply to the University of Michigan. She was accepted by the Ann Arbor institution and, after two intense years of dedicated study, earned her M.D in June 1880. After a year as an intern at a Chicago clinic, she returned to the university to complete post-graduate requirements. She was thrilled when her son George joined her there to finish his post-graduate work. Upon completion she treated both of them to an extended European tour. In the process, she made it a point to visit as many hospitals as she could to meet their most famous physicians and surgeons.

At age forty-four Bethenia fell in love with and married widower Colonel John Adair, a West Point graduate, then a farmer and land developer. They had known one another since childhood. He was cultured and adored her but was rather impractical and had no real profession. Bethenia was the family breadwinner. She dearly loved him and tolerated his questionable schemes. She was thrilled with the birth of a daughter, but the baby lived only three days.

Overcome with grief, they left Portland and moved to a remote farm area near Astoria. There, she divided her time between being a country doctor and helping her husband run their farm. She was not afraid to drive great distances alone in her carriage, at any time, under all kinds of weather conditions to reach patients. She later recalled, “At no time did I ever refuse a call, day or night, rain or shine.”
George was “on his own” and Mattie was an adult living at home. In 1891, Bethenia and Adair were to adopt two children. The first, in 1891, was the newborn son of a patient.

John went to New York on business during the winter of 1893. Bethenia did not object to his absence but the added work of running their farm contributed to mental and physical strain. She was often on horseback three to seven hours a day looking after the cattle. Mattie noticed that Bethenia was
not as strong as she had been. She was having trouble getting on her horse and that after a day on horseback had difficulty dismounting. It became apparent that she had developed rheumatism.

Once John returned, she went to visit George who had a medical practice in North Yakima, Washington. They felt that it would be advantageous for her rheumatism because of the high altitude and dry air. This proved be true and she was soon mounting a horse and riding out to explore the countryside. She told John that they should move there. Mattie moved into the farm, and they settled in North Yakima but would spend two months of each summer at the seaside resort of Seaside. She was able to continue her medical practice.

In 1895, she decided that she needed a postgraduate course. Leaving John to care for the adopted children, she went to Chicago where she attended lectures from nine in the morning until six then from eight to nine at night. She observed many operations among them the
removal of an appendix and a successful heart operation.

Having completed her studies, she remained in Chicago to attend a national convention of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in October. But she received a telegram informing her of the sudden death of Mattie and hastily returned home. Mattie’s adopted son came to live with Bethenia and Adair.

She continued to write, and several articles were published in various regional newspapers.
Following the death of John Adair in 1915, Bethenia devoted the rest of her life to fighting in print and in person for special reforms she felt would better her state and her nation. Her primary causes were woman suffrage, the evil in permitting the feeble minded and insane to bring children into the world, and temperance. She died in 1926, at the age of 85 and was buried in Ocean View Cemetery in Astoria.