With the publication some years ago of Love to Water My Soul, Portlander Audrey Slater sent me a letter writing that it was her family who descended from the Indian agent Josiah Parrish mentioned in that book. “His wife became one of the first doctors in Portland working with women and children.” That letter began a friendship that twenty years later has resulted in All She Left Behind. I am deeply indebted to Audrey and her daughter, Dianne Gregoire, for sharing stories of “Grandma Josie” and Josiah Parrish, for sending me a copy of Jennie’s diploma from Willamette Medical College in 1879, and for inspiring this story. I’m grateful too that the family allowed me to pursue where the facts might lead (to new information they never had) and to bring Jennie’s story of faith and perseverance to others.
My friendship with CarolAnne Tsai is another treasure that also began with a letter to me expressing an appreciation for my stories and offering to help in any way she could. Discovering her experience as a social worker (just like me!) who loves stories (just like me!) and that her expertise was in medical research (not like me at all!) opened doors to a variety of research sites.
The Methodist Archives in Philadelphia unlocked Jennie’s will, details of a house fire that took Jennie’s Salem house shortly after she died, copies of invoices for medical books she ordered, newspaper accounts and letters from her children to their father, details about a piano and programs from concerts attended. The Oregon Historical Society archives and Marion County Historical Society gave us obituaries and newspaper accounts of events, city directories and the addresses of Jennie’s office in Portland, details of their lives in Salem, and old photographs to bring the cities to life.
From Jennie’s will we learned of her previous marriage, of the son she’d had and his struggles, and how she intended to care for her children after her death. CarolAnne also located newspaper accounts verifying the addiction problems of the Pickett men.
CarolAnne was a constant voice of encouragement, a wise confidante about the story and Jennie’s possible motivations and where the story might end. I’m grateful beyond words. That we’ve shared family moments has been an added gift of abundance, including a hand-tooled pen made by her husband Stan and a drawing on our refrigerator made by their daughter Annelise. Research ought to be fun and CarolAnne made it so. She also read versions and gave advice.
Janet Meranda is another faithful friend who is a master copyeditor, but all errors or omissions belong to me.
I’m grateful to the team at Baker/Revell: Andrea Doering, Michele Misiak, Barb Barnes, Karen Steele, and so many others whom I’ve never met. Thank you for your confidence and professionalism in bringing Jennie’s story to readers. To my agent, Joyce Hart of Hartline Literary: we’ve had twenty-six years together in this publishing world and I am grateful for your care, vision, and grace. Leah Apineru of Impact Author has kept my social media life alive—I’m so grateful; Paul Schumacher keeps my website fresh and up-to-date. Thank you for your patience. Carol Tedder, my events coordinator, has helped me say both yes and no. I’d be lost without her.
Thank you as well to my prayer team across North America—Loris Webb, Judy Schumacher, Judy Card, Susan Parrish, Carol Tedder, Gabby Sprenger—and faithful friends like Marea Stone, Jill Dyer, Blair Fredstrom (who died during the final phases of this book), Melinda Stanfield (who offered insights as a retired physician), Sandy Maynard, Kay Krall, my sister-in-law Barb Rutschow, stepdaughter Katy Larsen; family and friends at First Presbyterian Bend and around the country, too numerous to mention, who offered encouragement and who are held in my heart. Thank you.
A special thanks to the unnamed photographer from the United Kingdom whom I met on a cruise who told me the story of the fox and the fleas that he outsmarted with wool.
And to Jerry, who listens patiently while I lament my chosen field of endeavor, and who helps me celebrate too. Thank you for enthusiastically cheering me on until I begin to believe what you have all along: that the stories are like prayers taking me to where I’m meant to go.
Jennie’s story unfolded with that one line from Audrey Slater’s letter years ago. From that I learned first of Josiah, an icon of Oregon history, and with much more digging, Jennie’s history of her first marriage, Charles and Douglas’s addiction issues, the marriage status, loss of a baby girl, her marriage to Josiah, their age difference, newspaper accounts of “the old man and the young woman” looking happy, the birth of Grace and Josie, the strychnine poisoning, Jennie’s enrollment and graduation, her election, Josiah’s operating the pharmacy and interest in the homeopathic society, professions of Jennie’s siblings, their deaths, and both her brother and Josiah’s son as Portland police officers. The generosity of Elizabeth and Josiah Parrish, their faithful Chinese cook, Charley Chen, and “Lizzie” are all from the historical records, as is Josiah’s giving Jennie thirty-three acres in Salem. Quilton the porcupine and Van the spaniel are not historical, though my husband did once have a friend with a pet porcupine that held up its bowl for milk.
Neither is Ariyah based on history. She is the result of a high bid to name a character at the Authors for Education event of the Gresham Barlow Education Foundation. Bess Wills was the high bidder and she gifted the win to Sue Piazza. Ariyah is Sue’s granddaughter’s name. It does mean “Pure Music” and Jennie needed the kind of friend Ariyah became.
At eighty-two, Josiah did remarry following Jennie’s death. He died of complications of a stroke in 1895 at the age of eighty-nine. Both Gracie and Josie—often known as JoJo—completed college and married doctors. Shortly after Jennie’s death, her house in Salem, along with valuables and precious letters that might have unveiled more about Jennie’s life, was destroyed by fire. The girls’ letters to their father lament the loss of so much but express gratitude that the piano was saved.
According to his obituary, Douglas died at the age of thirty-six, in jail as a result of “excessive indulgence in alcohol, cocaine and morphine to which habits he has been addicted for a number of years.” Was Jennie motivated to understand the impact of alcohol scientifically? We do know she was an allopath or “regular” doctor in her studies and practice. Did she hope for a cure? We don’t know. But given the obituary for both Charles and Douglas, the terrible waste of life addictions cause, and the overwhelming presence of alcohol abuse in the society of Salem and Portland at the time, it seems feasible that Jennie would have tried to find a way to rescue her family and, lacking that, find a way to forgive herself.
Women physicians were rare in the West, but Bethina Owens was a friend of the Parrishes and she did become the first woman physician in Oregon. The Ford sisters were the first to graduate from Willamette Medical College as physicians. Jennie, Callie Charlton, and Esther Yeargain followed. Mary Sawtelle’s experience with Willamette is as described. She went on to acquire her degree and worked while her husband finished his degree at Willamette. Find out more about her at www.oregonencyclopedia.org . Callie Charlton and more of Mary Sawtelle’s experiences have been blogged about at http://kimberlyjensenblog.blogspot.com/. Callie was the witness to Jennie’s will. Dr. Cook was a female specialist in San Francisco.
Women often chose homeopathic colleges back East where they were more likely to be treated as equals. Many women were taught home remedies as ways to treat their family illnesses, so homeopathic study was a natural direction. Those studying allopathic or “regular” medicine were more inclined toward pharmaceuticals and surgery to treat disease. Their study required access to hospitals and surgery opportunities, “reading” with physicians before matriculating, and as with Willamette, fewer women were accepted, making Jennie’s enrollment as a wife and mother unique for her time.
Jennie did not find the cures she sought. Her observations of the physical uniqueness of a child born to a mother who drank did not become known as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome until the 1980s. It must have been a deep grief that she could neither save her husband nor her son from the ravages of addiction. But she saw the value in treating women and children and making it a specialty and educating through the Medical Society other physicians.
She was indeed elected unanimously as vice president of the Oregon Medical Society and might well have become president had her life’s trajectory taken her a different way. She was forty-three years old when she died August 10, 1887. She is buried in the Lee Cemetery in Salem.