The Ripley Surname and Homeopathy
The Ripley surname contributed two great homeopaths, George Henry who was President of his local medical associations and state medical societies. Martha was a suffragist and activist, a Professor of Children’s Diseases, Obstetrics and Paediatrics and the founder of a maternity hospital.
George Henry Ripley 1860 - 1926
He was educated in the district schools of Fond du Lac county and Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin. He began the study of medicine under the preceptorship of Dr. A. W. Kanouse of Appleton, Wisconsin, and graduated from the Hahnemann Medical College, Chicago, in 1891.
Since his graduation he has been engaged in the active practice of his profession in Kenosha. He is the medical examiner for the I. O. O. F., the Royal League, M. W. A., and the Equitable Fraternal Union, and holds membership in the Homœopathic Medical Society of the State of Wisconsin, the American Institute of Homœopathy, and the Kenosha County Medical Association, of which he is president.
Dr. Ripley married, December 8, 1886, Florence M. Fellows.
I have pictures of him and pictures of the Doctor Ripley house which became a Retirement home. George’s father died when George was young, he was raised by his mother. His two older brothers left for South Dakota when George was still in school.
He left family history records which were used by Emma Ripley Cornog… George H. RIPLEY, Kenosha, Kenosha County, Wisconsin, one of the distinguished homeopathic practitioners of Kenosha, was born 22 October 1860 in the town of Oakfield [Oakfield Township], Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, a son of Charles T. and Lucy A. (HOLTON) RIPLEY.
Charles T. RIPLEY was born in Bennington, Chittenden County, Vermont, a son of Allen and Laura RIPLEY, who were also born in Vermont. Lucy A. (nee HOLTON) RIPLEY was born in Northfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts, and her ancestry is traced back to William HOLTON, who was born in 1611 in England, and on coming to America in 1634, established his home in Massachusetts, where he [William HOLTON] passed away 12 August 1691; his wife, Mary, died 16 November 1691….
George H. RIPLEY spent the days of his boyhood and youth on his father’s farm and acquired his early education in the district schools. Later he became a student in Lawrence University at Appleton [Outagamie County], Wisconsin.
Determining upon the practice of medicine as a life work, he afterward entered Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago [Cook County, Illinois] and is numbered among its alumni of 1891.
For a brief period he engaged in practice in Chicago, but soon returned to Kenosha, and has since followed his profession in this city. His ability form the first has been recognized and, moreover, it is known that he is an earnest and discriminating student of his profession, at all times keeping in touch with modern thought, research and investigation.
Dr. George H. RIPLEY belongs to the Kenosha County Medical Society, the Wisconsin State Homeopathic Society, the American Institute of Homeopathy, and the American Medical Association.
He is also a member of the State Board of Medical Examiners, and his high standing with the profession and especially in regard to his colleagues and contemporaries is indicated in his having served as President of the [Kenosha] county and [Wisconsin] state medical societies, and of the state board of examiners.
On 08 December 1886 Dr. [George H.] RIPLEY was married to Miss Florence M. FELLOWS of Kenosha, a daughter of Henry and Matilda (STANNARD) FELLOWS. They hold membership in the Methodist church, in the work of which Mrs. RIPLEY takes most active part. In politics the Doctor is a Republican, but the active duties of his profession leave him no time for participation in political work.
Martha Rogers Ripley 1843 - 1912 Homeopathic Physician and Professor of Children’s Diseases Minneapolis Homeopathic Hospital.
When Ripley saw the plight of the mill girls in Lawrence Massachusetts, Ripley decided to study medicine. Her sister had already graduated from the Boston University Medical School.
Ripley’s father was an abolitionist, and the family ran an underground railroad at the family home.
Ripley joined the Women’s Rights movement and she was close friends with Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and Henry Blackwell as Boston became a hotbed of the women’s rights movement.
Ripley was on the executive committee of the New England Woman Suffrage Association with Mercy Bisbee Jackson and Marie Zakrewska.
Ripley studied homeopathic medicine with Anna Howard Shaw, and she was deeply impressed by Mary Safford Blake.
When Ripley’s husband was seriously injured in a mill accident, she became the main wage earner for her family, which she moved to Minnesota, and she became president of the Minnesota Women’s Suffrage Association for the next six years, where she campaigned for women’s property rights and for improved sanitation and cremation and for women’s police matrons.
Ripley was a member of the Women’s Rescue League (ably assisted by women on bicycles) which rehabilitated local prostitutes and ‘conducted a war‘ on filth and dirty water, food adulteration.
Ripley specialised in children’s diseases and she opened a maternity hospital, and she was Professor of Children’s Diseases at the Minneapolis Homeopathic Medical College, under the care and control of women homeopaths.
Ripley was determined to admit unmarried mothers to her maternity hospital. She also looked after destitute children and established a social service department. Frances Willard and Carrie Chapman Catt were regular visitors.
Ripley died in 1912 when plans were underway for a new maternity home. Her ashes were buried under the cornerstone of the new Ripley Memorial Building.
Ripley, born in 1843, decided to study medicine when, as a volunteer nurse, an infant in her care died of the croup. She obtained her degree in Massachusetts and then moved with her husband and three daughters to Minnesota, where she established Maternity Hospital.
The hospital opened in 1886 in a small house on Fifteenth Street in Minneapolis with only three patients. From the beginning, the hospital doors were open to everyone, regardless of financial means, marital status, age, or ethnicity. Unwed women, who in the 1880s were seen as undeserving of medical care, found compassionate care at Ripley’s hospital.
Ripley’s zeal was directed toward reducing the deaths of both women and infants in childbirth. The practices she employed to that end often caused a stir. Hospital deliveries themselves were a rarity in the United States until the 1910s.
Ripley also caused a scandal for hemming her skirts above the floor for better sanitation. In other “firsts,” the hospital was the first to allow mothers and infants to room together and among the first to offer natural childbirth options.
Maternity Hospital’s statistics were enviable, with the maternal death rate a quarter of the average. As her reputation grew, Ripley was called on to lecture in obstetrics and pediatrics in medical colleges in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa.
With a steadily increasing demand for its services, the hospital repeatedly moved to larger locations. In 1896, the hospital was moved for the fourth time, relocating to the corner of Glenwood and Penn avenues.
Over the following two decades, three more buildings were added, a temporary home for infants, a cottage for nursing staff, and a bungalow for infants requiring special care.
In addition to her pioneering medical work, Ripley was a vocal social reformer. She served as President of the Minnesota State Suffrage Association and petitioned the State Legislature on the right to vote for women, as well as raising the age of consent from 10 to 16.
Ripley also fought for the inclusion of matrons on the Minneapolis police force and women on the Board of Education.
But her primary focus remained the hospital. In 1911, at its 25th anniversary celebration, Ripley made a plea for $50,000 to erect a new hospital building, citing the hospital’s longstanding mission to serving all in need and its essential role in the community.
The funding was raised, but Ripley would not live to see the new building completed. She died in 1912 of a respiratory infection.
Her last words were, “Is everything alright at the hospital?”
The building was completed in 1915 and named the Martha G. Ripley Memorial Building in her honor. Ripley’s ashes were laid in the cornerstone.
The Maternity Hospital closed in 1956 due to lack of funding and became the Queen Care Nursing Home. The nursing home closed in 2000.
Today, three of the original buildings remain on the site: Ripley Memorial Hospital, Emily Paddock Cottage, and the Babies’ Bungalow. continue reading:
Her biography was written by Winston U Solberg and she was included in Frances Willard and Mary A Livermore’s American Women: Fifteen Hundred Biographies with Over 1,400 Portraits
Ripley’s legacy continues today with the establishment of Ripley Gardens, one of the first multi-family projects for Habitat for Humanity. Eight town homes will be built on the grounds and through a partnership with the Central Community Housing Trust.
The red brick buildings that once housed the Martha Ripley Maternity Hospital in north Minneapolis are steeped in local history, but at least five years of inactivity and neglect have left the 1915-era structures in a state of disrepair.
Though her accomplishments have largely faded into obscurity, Dr. Martha Ripley played a crucial role in helping to turn a rough-and-tumble Minnesota milling center into a civilized city.
The renovation project Aeon (formerly Central Community Housing Trust) was established more than 20 years ago to address the loss of 350 units of housing demolished to build the Minneapolis Convention Center. Since then, Aeon has evolved into an award-winning nonprofit provider of quality affordable homes across the Twin Cities. We work to ensure that people with low and moderate incomes have access to decent and safe affordable homes.
Aeon currently provides homes to more than 2,500 people throughout the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area. Aeon plans to continue to grow and serve people and communities seeking high-quality, affordable places to call home.
Also of note:
1841 Brook Farm. In April 1841, George and Sophia Ripley (uncle and aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson), a former Unitarian minister and his wife, arranged to rent a farm in West Roxbury where they’d spent several summers, planning now to start a utopian community there.
They meant to form a community based on individual freedom and egalitarian relationships, regarding commerce as evil and planning to make their communal farm self-supporting and independent of outside markets. All members of the community were to share equally in the work and the rewards.
There would be no “wage slavery.” Cooperation and mutual support would replace the competitive spirit of the marketplace, and work would be mixed with opportunities for intellectual discussion, education, and socializing.
Calling the idyllic place Brook Farm, they would transform the buildings into communal housing, kitchens, classrooms, eating, and social spaces. Over the course of the summer, many Transcendentalists and other interested people from the Boston area would visit the farm. By autumn, they would be joined by about 15 other Transcendentalists and other interested persons, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was in love with one of the Brook Farm women.
Convinced that the experiment would succeed, in October George Ripley committed the fledgling organization’s funds to buying the 192-acre farm. Each person who had joined the community purchased at least one $500 share. Mortgages covered the remainder of the sale price….
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s shop also became a meeting place for the Trancendentalists, and many other influential people and homeopathic supporters met and exchanged ideas at this time.
Sue :: Feb.28.2008 :: American History :: No Comments »