I have been researching the Blue Ridge Parkway by the miles. I have used several books and maps. I call this kind of hunting “following a paper trail” because one book leads to another book or map until I find what I am looking for. I do this quite a bit.

I am looking for interesting spots to visit and write about. The location at the top of my list is in Virginia. It is located at milemarker 189.9. The signs say the cabin belonged to a famous midwife, Orlean Puckett, from Groundhog Mountain but that is not true. This cabin belonged to her sister-in-law, Betty, which was moved there from Cherry Ridge to be near Orlean and John because Betty was deathly scared of thunderstorms.

The real Puckett cabin was torn down by Orlean’s great nephew Coy.  He refused to give the Parkway the house because they took Orlean’s land. She died three weeks after moving out of her homeplace. This was a sad end to a great life of serving others. She was 102 at the time, so I cannot lay all the blame of her demise on the Parkway people.

The tale of Orlean Puckett’s life is one of hardship and survival. She lost 24 babies of her own to early death or miscarrage. The theory is the deaths were due to blood Rh-factor incompatibility. It is speculated that Orlean was Rh- and John was Rh+. This meant that poor Orlean’s blood antibodies attacked all her Rh+ babies, except the first one, Julia. Orlean’s body attacked her fetuses as foreign. This disease is called erythroblastosis fetalis, if you want to look it up. Women with Rh- blood get RhoGAM shots now, so this does not happen.

Blood typing was not done at the time Orlean was having such troubles. It is heart-breaking to think of she and John experiencing such sorrow 24 times. Some folks even blamed them for the deaths.

Orlean became a midwife out of necessity at the age of 45. It seems a baby was about to be born without assistance, so her husband fetched Orlean out of desparation. I guess he figured all those stillbirths was more practice than anybody else available had.

When Orlean caught that first baby boy, she experienced such joy that she felt called to continue. Doctors were scarce and expensive. Orlean was handy and took almost any barter item as her payment. She is said to have delivered over 1000 babies throughout the mountains.

Other information about her life is fascinating. Karen Cecil Smith did a thorough job of researching the Hawks and Puckett family. The book Orlean Puckett: The Life of a Mountain Midwife is a great resource on many aspects of mountain life during the mid-1800s and on the construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

If you happen to be riding along the Parkway,  the cabin at mile 189.9 is just one of many fascinating stops. Stay tuned folks. There’s more to come.

FLOW