Memoirs of a Cape Codder

NETTIE KNOWLES

I have no memory of the first “face” I want to tell you about in this Chapter, but she and the place with which she was associated played key roles in the most critical event which occurred in my life, namely my birth.  I know about the role this person played from detailed reports on this event, which I have received over the years.  The person was Nettie Knowles, the midwife who assisted me as I emerged into the world on April 25 1932. 

This momentous event occurred in a small room in a wing attached to Mrs. Knowles’ house, northerly of and immediately adjacent to the old Cove Burial Grounds on what is now Route 6 in South Eastham.  Ironically, as I noted in the Introduction to the first Chapter, you could look out the windows of that room directly upon markers of the graves of Pilgrims in the cemetery, some no more than 20 feet away. 

As you might imagine, there were many wry comments about the irony of births occurring next to a cemetery. And coincidentally, the closest stone to the birthing room was the large marker for Giles Hopkins, from whom I am descended, who arrived in Plymouth in 1620 at the age of 16 and settled later in 1646 at the head of the Orleans Town Cove.

Nettie Knowles, who was born at the end of the Civil War in 1865, began serving as a mid-wife in the Orleans-Eastham area in 1907.  There was no hospital on the Cape at that time, and Nettie went, with the local doctor, to the house of the expectant mother to assist in the birth and to provide care to the mother and child after the birth.

In 1924, she added a small addition to the south side of the house, facing the cemetery, which she and her husband, James, owned.  It was to serve as a birthing or lying-in room.  Expectant mothers traveled to the Knowles house where she and one of the doctors in the local area, either Dr. White in Orleans or Dr. Bell in Wellfleet, attended the deliveries. 

Although the Cape Cod Hospital opened in Hyannis in 1919, local ladies resisted going there because it was a long trip and some of them were suspicious of hospitals (“that’s where you go to die”).  Nettie, on the other hand, having been serving as a mid-wife for 17 years, was trusted to assist in the delivery of a child in a skillful manner and provide warm attentive care after the delivery to both mother and child. 

Nettie’s husband had become fatally ill, and after he died in 1925, Nettie had another room available in the house in which the expectant mother could stay. With the increase of births in the succeeding years, there were often times when there was double occupancy at the Knowles lying-in facility.

The work involved in caring for a mother and child was not easy.  Cooking meals, cleaning, washing and ironing cloths and bed linens, and attending to the needs of her charges took a lot of strength and effort.  Nettie delivered babies at her home up until early 1934 when she became ill and eventually passed away that year at the age of 69.  During the period she operated her birthing facility, 83 babies were delivered at the Knowles house.  The most delivered in one-year was in 1931 with the delivery of 17 babies.

The list of births during the 11 year span contains the names of many old Cape families in the area, such as Nickerson, Snow, Doane, Gould, Mayo, Richardson, Knowles, Sherman, Quinn, and of course, Hopkins.  My sister was born in the room next to the cemetery in July 1930, and many of my classmates in school also were born there.

My mother, Lucy Hopkins, later told me that in those days a woman, after delivery, usually stayed at Nettie’s house for two weeks before going home, the first week entirely in bed and the second week, sitting up part-time in a chair. Compare that with what typically occurs today. 

There was no delivery room or delivery table in Nettie’s home, and a baby was born in a bed, similar to home deliveries.  If contractions were too hard, the attending doctor sometimes gave a small amount of gas or ether to the patient to ease the pain.  Very different from what how deliveries are handled today.

In recent years, Nettie Knowles’ house came into disrepair, and the owner was planning to tear it down rather than face the cost of renovation.  Warren Quinn, who was born in the house in December of 1929, had other ideas.  Warren recognized the historical significance of the building where so many of his fellow Cape Codders had been born.

For many years, he had been in the excavation and construction business, which included moving houses.   And so he arranged with the owner of the Knowles property to have the building moved to a lot he had acquired one mile away and lined up a person to buy the resulting property for the cost of the lot and expenses, with the proviso that the new owner would renovate and maintain the building. In February 1999, the house was moved to this new lot where it was restored.

But the resulting property is missing one significant feature.  It no longer has a view of the grave markers in the old Cove Burial Ground, upon which so man