DUMMERSTON — In 2004, Carolyn Peck created We Remember Dr. Grace Burnett, a film about the fifth woman to practice medicine in Vermont and Brattleboro's first female physician.
Burnett, one of the town's most beloved citizens, delivered the filmmaker, who lived across the street from her and her family, and who employed her mother in the medical office.
The film was shown locally and was eventually donated to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. But amid the chaos of renovations to the hospital campus at the time, the work vanished.
It's now been found, and will be shown as part of a free afternoon of learning, "Dr. Grace Burnett; A Country Doctor," presented by longtime Brattleboro physician Dr. Robert Tortolani, on Sunday, Oct. 22, at 2 p.m.
Burnett's professional focus included family medicine in addition to her interest in obstetrics and gynecology.
She had once been married and divorced but had no children. After her death in 1963, her few remaining relatives scheduled an estate auction to dispose of her property and sell her father's house in West Dummerston.
An ad in the Brattleboro Reformer announced that Paul W. Lawton, auctioneer and appraiser of real estate, would sell the home and the doctor's many belongings, including her 30 wagons, sleighs, and buggies, and an authentic Concord coach, which Burnett had lent out a few times for weddings of friends and family.
In attendance that day was Dummerston resident Sylvio "Shorty" Forrett, who purchased the photo albums, papers, and medical books from Burnett's estate. Forrett, who died in 2019, later donated them to the Dummerston Historical Society.
Charles Fish, a member of the Dummerston Historical Society's board of directors, is thrilled to have them. "We were so fortunate that Shorty Forrett attended the auction and had the foresight to purchase this important piece of local history and later donate it to the Society," he said. "We're very grateful to [him] and his family."
Enter Tortolani, whose father practiced medicine in rural Connecticut in much the same way as Grace Burnett did here.
"I got a call from Chuck Fish. He and the Dummerston Historical Society were interested in learning more about Dr. Burnett's medical practice," Tortolani said.
Tortolani said that Fish has been studying Burnett's medical library of approximately 50 books and her papers in the Historical Society holdings and "was looking for someone to collaborate on an event where we explored her life and what her medical practice might have been like compared to today."
Tortolani says he followed in the footsteps of his physician father, who practiced about 20 years after Dr. Burnett began her career.
Between Burnett's legacy, his father's career, and his own medical practice, Tortolani has knowledge of about the last century of how medicine was practiced.
"I've been in Brattleboro for 50 years and had a family practice here for 44 years," he said. "I've been keeping my hand in medicine without the exhaustion of a full practice since my retirement. I'm very interested in medical history."
A century of changes in medicine
Tortolani says that after the film screening, he will speak with a focus on how medicine might have been practiced in Vermont during Burnett's time.
Among the 50 books in the Burnett collection is a copy of The Principles and Practice of Medicine: Designed for the Use of Practitioners and Students of Medicine, by Sir William Osler, a Canadian physician and one of the founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital who pioneered the concept of clinical training for medical students. The book was first published in 1892.
"It was the textbook from the early 1900s through the 1930s," Tortolani says, "It was an important text for her practice of medicine."
Tortolani has also been studying the medical history of the area and came across a letter that a patient in Springfield, Vermont wrote to her doctor in Bellows Falls, before the advent of the telephone.
"It says, 'I have a sore throat, and can you come and see me?'" Tortolani said.
"This was back in the old days," the doctor continued. "You sent your eldest son out on a horse to put the letter in the mail, and since mail was delivered twice a day it was likely to reach the doctor at mail delivery that afternoon so that the doctor could arrive the following day."
Why not just go get the doctor?
"If the son had ridden all the way to the doctor's house, he likely would have been out on a call anyway," says Tortolani with a chuckle, as he added, "The quickest way to reach the doctor was through the mail."
From the farm to a medical career
In 1961, Rev. Fred Miller, upon bestowing the Brattleboro Chamber of Commerce's Greater Brattleboro Citizen of the Year award to Burnett, said, "In an era spanning two World Wars when the value of life has fallen to an all-time low, it is indeed refreshing to stand in the presence of one whose entire life's story is filled with a 'reverence for life.'"
One of four children, Grace Burnett grew up on a farm in West Dummerston, attended school through the ninth grade in a one-room schoolhouse, and graduated from Brattleboro High School in 1905. Burnett insisted she wanted to become a doctor even when she was a child and pretended to treat her beloved animals on the farm.
After a brief stint teaching, and some time working in Brattleboro at a textile factory manufacturing overalls, she completed medical school in Michigan, and graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1912. Working almost to the day she died in 1963, she served the Brattleboro area for nearly 50 years.
Her years of her practice, which began shortly before the deadly Flu pandemic in 1918-19, saw her going from riding horseback or driving to farms and houses all over the county, first by buggy and then by automobile. The call to rush to a patient's bedside that would first come via a knock on her door eventually came via a telephone call.
No matter the form of transportation or communication, she would respond to calls at all hours of the day or night to attend to someone who was ill or injured a home or an accident site.
"I'm really looking forward to talking about her. She's a famous physician who was a wonderful doctor and deserves a lot of attention," Tortolani said. "We're all really excited about the event."
Memories of a beloved doctor
Burnett's memories are alive in many local residents, some of whom she attended at their own birth or the birth of their siblings.
Don Hazelton, now 93, remembers the birth of his sister at the family farm in Dummerston Center, one which Burnett attended.
"By 1936, she had an automobile, but she used to come visit our farm in a horse and buggy," he said. "She loved her horses; we all knew that.
"I was born by her, as far as I know. In 1936, my sister Carol was born at home, too," Hazelton said.
"I came home and peeked in my mother's bedroom and Carol had just arrived, but they kicked me out of there in a hurry," he recalled. "Nowadays, you go and set up at a hospital but, in those days, Dr. Burnett might go out to deliver a baby and stay there for three days if the baby or the mother wasn't well."
Having begun her practice locally in 1914, Burnett had already delivered more than 3,000 babies by 1931.
Hazelton noted that Dr. Burnett wasn't always paid in cash.
"That was in the middle of the Great Depression," he said. "She might get a carrot or two, or something from the farm."
Hazelton remembers both her home in West Dummerston - where she grew up and had "a barn that had just about anything and everything in it" - and her own home on the corner of Western Avenue and Northern Avenue in Brattleboro, which "also had a barn where we used to build floats for the [Brattleboro High School] alumni parade."
That house was later torn down to build Interstate 91. It was located right where Exit 2 in Brattleboro now stands.
West Brattleboro resident Janice Wright Bodor, who died in 2003, once wrote that West Brattleboro residents knew "not to speak with Dr. Burnett when they saw her on horseback on Western Avenue, knowing that she was probably in a hurry to get to someone's house."
These observations and kind sentiment are echoed in Elsie Tier's tender memoir about Dr. Burnett. Tier described herself as Burnett's "office girl."
"She was a loving and generous doctor," Tier wrote. "On a call she would check out the whole family, not just the sick person, and the pay could be made with wood, hay, lace, or handiwork...all was pleasantly accepted. People said they felt better just for talking with her."
Local resident Mandy Barbara, 97, remembers Burnett's power of speech.
"Her voice was soft, and she was very kind. I can't ever picture her raising her voice to anything. She had a big heart. She always had her big collie dog with her. The dog didn't come in the house, but usually waited in the car," noted Barbara.
She also remembers that Burnett "wasn't the neatest person, I can tell you that!"
Barbara noted that Burnett "was my mother's doctor when my sister was born. It was a home delivery, but she didn't get there in time. My grandmother did the honors. Dr. Burnett came long after. The year was May 1930."
Barbara's father was an accountant who recorded every penny he spent in a little book.
"Here's an entry," she says. "On Jan. 30, 1930, Dr. Burnett was paid $2 when she visited our house to get ready for my sister's birth in May. On May 23, here I see they made a phone call for 15 cents to the doctor. To do that, my father would have had to drive to a little store in Vernon."
Barbara thinks her mother was very happy to have a female doctor.
"People were very modest then. They'd rather die than have a man look at them," she said.
"People were happy with her," Barbara added with a warm smile.
Well, not everyone.
David Chase, a local screenwriter, actor, author, and playwright, wrote, "I was born at home in West Brattleboro. Not a lot of people can say that. Dr. Grace Burnett was the doctor during my mother's pregnancy, and she believed in home births."
Chase said his mother switched doctors after she learned that "Dr. Burnett often took the phone off the hook so she could get some sleep. These were the days (1941-42) long before 911, and the idea that she couldn't reach a doctor to treat some crisis was too much for my mother."
Dr. Burnett eventually established a practice on Elliot Street in Brattleboro, above where the Blueberry Haus is now located. Mandy Barbara visited her there in 1944.
"She was so happy to think that was going to be a nurse. I had smallpox vaccinations and whatever else was required. I was 17. She said, 'I'm not going to charge you anything,'" Barbara said.
"That was so like her," she added. "She had a big heart."
This News item by Fran Lynggaard Hansen was written for The Commons.