Swan's Island: Six miles east of ordinary

From the first European settlement on Swan’s Island, written records show that the community has financially supported the medical welfare of its general public. Town reports from the early 20th century record payment of care for those that boarded the sick and infirmed, transported to the mainland those who needed medical care, purchased immunizations and sanitation supplies, and partnered with the Maine Seacoast Mission. Using its boat Sunbeam, the Mission “aids the (Maine coastal or island) town or plantation in finding and supporting a nurse or physician” including “removing sick people to mainland hospitals.” (Westbrook, 173)

The town paid monthly salaries to doctors for decades from the late 1800s through the 1940s. There is a note in our reading that Clarissa Bridges served as a midwife for at least a decade beginning in 1880. However, starting in the 1940s, town reports record payments to nurses starting in 1941 with Miss Douglass. The 1947 Town Report published a Nurses Agreement between the the Town of Swan's Island and the Maine Seacoast Mission. Those who served our island in the capacity of nurse that followed Miss Douglass are Ruth Osborne, Ann Calley, Leila Whitehill, Helen Bernstoff, Betty Louden, Irene Kent, Esther MacDuffie, and Trudy Lunt. Record of payment to the town’s nurses stops in the late 1970s.

Irene Kent served as town nurse from 1951 until 1957 and again from 1967 until 1972. She also served as a representative of the Village of Atlantic on the Committee for Health and Sanitation for many years starting in the early 1950s.

In the 1980s Ruth Torrey became an EMT and served as supervisor for the Emergency Management services for many years. The island now has a very dedicated EMT service voluntarily staffed by many women. All of these women have provided caring and dedicated medical services to the community of Swan’s Island for close to one hundred years.