THE WORLD OUTSIDE COMES TO BEAVER
1870-1900
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day attended by two M o r m o n general authorities and a public concert and ball. Thirty-eight students enrolled the first day, and within two weeks the enrollment reached 100. The school was directed by E. D. Partridge who was sent to Beaver from the parent institution in Provo. He remained until 1900 w h e n he r e t u r n e d to Provo and Andrew B. Anderson was assigned as principal. Students from all across the region came to complete the two-year high school course offered. Classes were offered in chemistry, physics, mathematics, English literature, and music. Physical education, elocution, and theology rounded out the offering. The Beaver Branch of Brigham Young Academy became an independent school in 1908 and was renamed Murdock Academy. With the construction of a beautiful two-story pink stone building between 1908 and 1913, and a full four-year high school program offered, Murdock Academy stayed open until 1922, when declining enrollment because of the development of public high schools in the area led to its closure on 12 May 1922. Much of the school equipment was given to the Beaver High School.110
Health Issues Settlers of Beaver County were dependent on a group of dedicated midwives who delivered babies and cared for other medical needs as best they could until medical doctors arrived in the county. Traditions and customs affected health care in Beaver County as in other parts of the country. Women and usually their husbands were adverse to using the services of a male doctor during child delivery. Consequently, until well into the twentieth century a cadre of dedicated midwives took charge of this i m p o r t a n t responsibility. Midwives not only assisted in the delivery process but stayed on to help both mother and child with whatever needed to be done including the necessary house work. Some, including Elizabeth Grundy, received training in Salt Lake City in child birth and other medical techniques. One midwive, Ruth Reese of Greenville, took pride in greeting the young men she had delivered with, "I was the first one to see you, my boy."111 The first doctors, John Ward Christian and George Fennemore, came to Beaver with the San Bernardino exiles in 1858. Both m e n
