North Cumberland Historical Society
Adeliza Amelia Betts (March 18, 1853 – Nov. 11, 1934)
Adeliza Amelia Betts was born in Wallace, daughter of Philopina Amelia Atkinson and Ichabod R. Betts. Her father was a farmer and her mother the first woman to teach public school in Nova Scotia. Philopina died in 1863 when Adeliza was 10 years old. She took over many of the household duties as well as nursing her sister who was an invalid. Her sister died when she was 35 in 1888, and she was finally able to go to Boston to follow her dream and begin nursing training.
She wanted to go to India, but another sick relative needed nursing in Boston. Resigned to staying at home, she had to wait again before pursuing her career. She entering the Deaconess Home and Training School as one of the first three students in its nursing program. It was a Methodist institution which helped women who wanted to further their education and study nursing as well as theology. She graduated in 1898. While doing practical work in the course of her training, she was deeply touched by the distress and despair she found in the homes of the sick and poor and envisioned a Christian hospital where the penniless could receive the same care as the wealthy.
She was called to nurse a relative of the President of the Deaconess Association. She so impressed him that he was willing to take her ideas to the Association. It was greeted with enthusiasm, and a campaign was launched to raise funds for the proposed hospital.
The hospital was founded in 1896 and followed by one in Concord in 1911. At first it was small with fourteen beds and a staff of two nurses other than Adeliza - Annette Lundwell and Lilly Brown. It was said of Adeliza that in the early years she carried patients upstairs in her arms to the operating room on the third floor. She often also gave up her own bed to make way for a patient who had no other alternative. She was made superintendent and continued in that capacity for twenty-two years and as Superintendent Emeritus for the remainder of her life. By the time she died, the hospital had, under her watch, grown to 160 nurses and 300 beds. Over 600 nurses had graduated and gone to all parts of the globe.
In 1917, when the Halifax Explosion occurred, she sent the first nurses from outside Nova Scotia to reach Halifax.
She died in Boston at age 81.
Excerpted from Some North Cumberlandians at Home and Abroad Past and Present a publication of the North Cumberland Historical Society