Wendover: Home of Mary Breckinridge | Kentucky Studies

Mary Breckinridge started the Frontier Nursing Service in 1925, bringing nurse-midwives to deliver babies in Eastern Kentucky. Midwives are trained to help women during childbirth.

Breckinridge had remarkable success. Maternal mortality rates among women whose babies were delivered by the Frontier Nursing Service were about 10 times lower than those in nearby Lexington, Kentucky, and in the nation.