Carrie McDonnell Stewart  (1878–1986)
Midwife
Franklin, NC

“Some mothers were so contrary you couldn’t hardly help them. I went and sit down one time. I said, ‘Just go ahead. I shall not touch you until you get to where you can abide by what I tell you’.”

Carrie Stewart, a centenarian, was a sprightly and mischievous memorist, whose stories of marriage and family are a veritable history of all the ways women learned by doing. With ten children of her own—all born at home—she knew a lot about babies, and she went to school to earn her midwife’s permit from the state Board of Health and delivered babies in homes (often with the encouragement of a local doctor) until she was seventy-two years old.

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