Mary Edith “Mayme” Elliott, RN, ANC 1879-1950

Washington State
Nursing License Application, 1909

Mary Edith “Mayme” Elliott was born on August 18, 1879 in Payette Valley, Ada County, Idaho, to Thomas Elliott, a Maryland‑born miner and early pioneer of the Idaho gold fields, and Margaret Jane Starr of Iowa. She joined an older brother, Jesse (b.1877) and in time became the middle child between him and her three younger siblings, Annie (b. 1882), Paul (b. 1888) and Norman (b. 1890). Tragically, Annie died of measles in March 1891, a loss that left a lasting mark on the family’s early life.

Mayme’s father, Thomas Elliott, lived the kind of restless, risk‑laden life that helped define the early American West. He chased the Gold Rush to California in the early 1850s and then pursued mining in Idaho. He discovered the Sub‑Rosa mine in the Boise Basin and owned both placer and quartz claims in the Florence and Boise Basin sections. He made and lost several fortunes in the volatile world of frontier mining, eventually settling into family life and farming in the Payette Valley.

In August 1898, he moved his family once again, this time to Baker City, Oregon. Newspapers that year were filled with reports of spectacular strikes in the region, and Baker City was quickly becoming a magnet for miners hoping to ride the next wave of prosperity. One such report appeared in the Salt Lake Herald on March 7, 1898, describing a newly uncovered mine in nearby Grant County that “promises to be one of the richest producers of the yellow metal ever found in the West.” The article marveled that two men, working only five hours—from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.—had produced a cleanup worth $518.37, roughly equivalent to $20,000 in 2025. For a man like Thomas, who had spent his life pursuing opportunity wherever it surfaced, such news would have been irresistible.

But the promise of Baker City proved short‑lived. Thomas fell ill the following spring and died there on May 10, 1899. After his death, Mayme’s widowed mother supported her children as a laundress. The 1900 census shows Mayme working as a candy saleswoman while living with her mother and brothers Jesse, Paul, and Norman. Several years later, on January 10, 1906, Margaret remarried, becoming the wife of Charles W. Durkee of Baker City. 

Mayme pursued education and professional training with remarkable determination. She attended high school in Payette and later Presbyterian College in Idaho before completing a two year nursing program at Walla Walla Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1904.

Her talent and leadership were quickly recognized. By 1905, she was superintendent of nurses at the Walla Walla Hospital and Training School, a position she would hold for several years. Her brother Norman later joined her there, taking charge of the hospital’s business office in 1906.

On November 12, 1907, Mayme married George W. Barry, a traveling agent associated with the Schwabacher Company of Seattle.  George had traveled in the eastern Washington territory for work,  making Walla Walla his headquarters a greater part of the time. The couple made their home there, where both were deeply involved in the operations of the Walla Walla Hospital—George as president and Mayme as secretary and superintendent.

Mayme continued to advance professionally. She completed postgraduate training in anesthesia and hospital management and gained clinical experience at leading hospitals in Chicago, St. Paul, and St. Louis. She held key professional leadership positions, among them the president of the Walla Walla County Association of Graduate Nurses and a 1911 appointment to the Washington State Nurses Examining Board.

She resigned from her position at the Walla Walla Hospital in 1912 and relocated to California, where she was appointed acting superintendent of the Peninsula Hospital in Palo Alto during the leave of absence of its permanent superintendent, Elizabeth Hogue. The role became permanent when Hogue formally resigned in the summer of 1913. Mayme later obtained her California nursing registration on December 4, 1915.

It is unclear whether George accompanied her to California. By June 1918, Mayme filed for divorce on the grounds of neglect, and the marriage was formally dissolved in May 1922.

Her training and experience in anesthesia, a specialty still in its early professionalization, soon brought her national recognition. During World War I, in July 1918, she was appointed by the U.S. Surgeon General as an anesthetist‑at‑large with American forces in Europe. She served in France at the Mevses Hospital Center with Base Hospital 50 and later as chief anesthetist in Dijon. After the American Hospital at Dijon closed in 1919, she was sent to Evacuation Hospital No. 27 in Coblenz, Germany, where her skill with nitrous‑oxide anesthesia was particularly valued. She remained chief anesthetist there until March 1920, when family illness required her return to California. On her return, she resumed her duties as superintendent and chief anesthetist at Palo Alto Hospital (formerly the Peninsula Hospital).

On January 1, 1923, Mayme married Colonel Julian Lee Dodge at Stanford Memorial Church. Dodge was a seasoned military officer, having served in the Spanish‑American War, the Philippine Insurrection, and World War I. After returning from the war, he entered civilian life by joining his brothers Nathaniel and George in running the American Rubber Company. His personal life, however, had been marked by profound loss. In 1920, his first wife died in childbirth along with their second child, a tragedy that left him widowed and raising their daughter Mary Louise (b.1916) alone

Following her marriage to Col Dodge, Mayme retired from active nursing practice. Though she had spent decades in leadership roles and wartime service, she did not resume professional work afterward, accompanying her husband as his business career took them to various communities across California. The couple lived in various California cities over the next two decades—San Francisco, Glendale, Los Angeles, San Jose, and finally Saratoga—while Dodge continued his business career. Their household occasionally included extended family, including Mayme’s niece Norma Elliott, who lived with them through the 1930s and into 1940.

Mayme endured a series of profound family losses over the course of her adult life. Her younger brother Norman died in 1931 at just thirty‑nine from tuberculosis, followed by the passing of her mother, Margaret Durkee, in 1933 after several years of declining health. A decade later, in 1944, she suffered the nearly back‑to‑back deaths of her remaining brothers, Paul and Jesse, leaving her the last surviving member of her immediate family.

Colonel Dodge died on July 20, 1942, closing a long career of military and civilian service. In the years that followed, Mayme remained in the Santa Clara Valley, eventually settling in Los Gatos, where the 1950 census lists her as head of household. She died later that same year, on December 23, 1950, in Santa Clara County, and was laid to rest beside Julian at San Francisco National Cemetery.

Sources:

Census Records 1880 U.S. Census, Payette Valley, Ada County, Idaho, Enumeration District 003 1900 U.S. Census, Baker, Baker County, Oregon, Enumeration District 0162 1910 U.S. Census, Walla Walla Hospital, Walla Walla, Washington, Enumeration District 0245 1930 U.S. Census, Los Angeles, California, Enumeration District 0113 1940 U.S. Census, Saratoga, Santa Clara County, California, Enumeration District 43‑147 1950 U.S. Census, Los Gatos, Santa Clara County, California, Enumeration District 43‑104 Newspapers "The Grim Reaper," The Caldwell Tribune, March 21, 1891 "An Oregon Klondike," Salt Lake Herald (Salt Lake, Utah), March 7, 1898 "Uncle Tom Elliott is Dead," The Payette Independent (Payette, Idaho), May 18, 1899 "Nurses Finish," The Evening Statesman (Walla Walla, Wash.), September 9, 1904 "Personal Mention," The Evening Statesman (Walla Walla, Wash.), June 2, 1906 "Wedded in Portland Today," The Evening Statesman (Walla Walla, Wash.), November 12, 1907 "Miss Hogue Will Leave Hospital," Peninsula Times Tribune (Palo Alto, Calif.), May 2, 1913 "Death Notices," Chicago Tribune, June 13, 1920 "New Suits, Probate Filings, Etc.," The Recorder (San Francisco, Calif.), May 6, 1922 "Married at Stanford Church," Peninsula Times Tribune (Palo Alto, Calif.), January 2, 1923 "Superintendency of Local Hospital Changes," Peninsula Times Tribune (Palo Alto, Calif.), January 3, 1923 "Colfax Man Dies," The Press‑Tribune (Roseville, Calif.), May 27, 1931 "Death Takes Col. J. L. Dodge," Los Gatos Times–Saratoga Observer, July 23, 1942 "Paul Elliott Dies Monday," Baker City Herald (Baker City, Oregon), February 7, 1944 "Jesse Elliott Dies Today in Baker," Baker City Herald (Baker City, Oregon), March 18, 1944 "Mrs. Julian Dodge Called By Death," Los Gatos Times–Saratoga Observer, October 24, 1950 Directories 1904 Walla Walla City and County Directory 1905 Walla Walla City and County Directory 1909–1910 Walla Walla Directory 1922 San Jose Directory 1923 Glendale City Directory 1926 San Francisco Directory 1928 San Francisco Directory 1929 San Francisco Directory 1930 San Jose Directory 1931 Glendale City Directory 1932 San Jose Directory 1932 Glendale City Directory 1933 San Jose Directory 1934 San Jose Directory 1935 San Jose Directory 1939 San Jose Directory 1940 Los Gatos City Directory Vital Records & Government Documents Oregon Marriage Record #9218, George W. Barry & Mayme Elliott, November 12, 1907 Washington State Nursing Registration Application, 1910 U.S. Army Transport List, August 25, 1918 Oregon Death Record #116 (Margaret Jane Durkee), August 27, 1933  U.S. National Cemetery Interment Control Forms. Julian Lee Dodge21 Jul 1942

U.S. National Cemetery Interment Control Forms. Mayme Dodge. 23 Oct 1950 Journals Nurses’ Journal of the Pacific Coast, July 1912 Session Laws of the State of Washington, 1911 Monthly Bulletin (California State Board of Health), vol. 11, 1915–1916 Books Evans, Grace Radcliff. Joseph Radcliff and His Descendants, 1924 Sawyer, Eugene. History of Santa Clara County with Biographical Sketches, 1922