Care runs in the family

By Phyllis Ormsby and Patsy Brewer

Central Arkansas patients needing medical care today have many options, including same-day doctor appointments, local hospitals or walk-in medical clinics. But what did our ancestors in rural areas do when they were sick?

Today, you can drive from Mount Vernon to Conway in about 30 minutes, but in the late 1800s that same 25-mile trip took an entire day in a bouncy, dusty wagon, open to the heat, cold or rain. For people who lived in the Mount Vernon region, the answer was house calls on horseback. One family has preserved the history and legacy of two of their ancestors who made house visits.

The research started when an issue of 501 LIFE published a story recognizing doctors in Faulkner County and mentioned Dr. Justice Franklin Powers and his son, Dr. Justice Tavner Powers, both of Mount Vernon. Patsy Powers Brewer, the great-great-granddaughter of the elder Dr. Powers, read the story and knew it was time to put her family’s history in writing. Her research started in earnest about six months ago.

“This is a piece of Faulkner County history that I want to share,” Patsy said. Many of the original items used by these doctors have been passed down through the generations and are in the care of Patsy and her husband, Daymon, who live in Mount Vernon. The family has carefully preserved the large collection of artifacts, including saddlebags with original glass medicine bottles, a variety of medical instruments like bone saws used for amputations, a pistol and even a mad stone.

Amanda Brewer Murphy, manager of radiation oncology at CARTI is the

great-great-great-great-granddaughter of the elder Dr. Powers.

“Horseback doctors were the backbone of rural healthcare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” Patsy wrote in “Horseback Doctors of Mount Vernon, Arkansas.” “Traveling miles a day in all weather conditions, these physicians carried their entire practice in saddlebags—acting as general practitioners, surgeons and dentists while often compounding their own medicines. They operated out of saddlebags rather than modern hospitals, carrying supplies to splint bones, pull teeth and deliver babies.”

Her research has been extensive, and getting the correct details about each life has been very important to her. “I started by digging through everything I had been given in the past, and I uncovered things that we had been told down through the years that probably turned out not to be true,” Patsy said. “For example, we had always been told that Franklin Powers was a prisoner of war during the Civil War, but I found out, through his original obituary that he was a surgeon during the war. I think the obituary is correct.”

Patsy Brewer holds a portrait of her great-great-grandfather, Dr. Justice Franklin Powers, who settled in Mount Vernon in 1874. For the next two decades, he traveled by horseback to care for patients in the surrounding community.

While searching through items passed down by her parents, she found a real treasure: original ledgers kept by the wife of the younger Dr. Powers, Sarah, who was Patsy’s great-grandmother. “Sarah often served as her husband’s medical assistant. She was also a businesswoman, operating a local country store where she crafted hats, burial garments and items the community might need. She had two ledgers, one with items bought and charged and the other if the customer was paying cash,” she wrote.

Patsy, now 82, remembers staying with Sarah in her Mount Vernon home. “She was a hat maker, and I remember I was always asking for a hat,” she said, laughing. She was finally given a woven straw hat that she treasured through the years, replacing the decorative hatband when needed.

These doctors’ lives were not easy despite their status in the community. They often traveled for miles in all kinds of weather conditions to reach their patients. “Because cash was scarce, bartering was standard,” Patsy wrote. “Doctors frequently accepted payment for medical visits in the form of livestock, fruits, vegetables or home-baked goods.”

Artist Gene Hatfield’s painting imagines Mount Vernon around the turn of the 20th century, offering a glimpse of the community the Powers family called home.

The elder Dr. Powers was born in Ohio on Sept. 22, 1821, and graduated from Missouri Medical College. He appears to have served in the Confederate Army until 1863. Before he traveled further south, he instructed his wife, Susan, and his two children to stay in Ohio with his mother until he sent for them. After the war, Susan and the children traveled by boat to Little Rock and then moved to Quitman (on the Faulkner and Cleburne County line) to stay with friends. “I can’t even imagine how long a trip like that would have taken,” Patsy said. The Powers family settled in Mount Vernon in 1874, and the elder Dr. Powers died Jan. 10, 1894, at 73.

His son, Justice Tavner Powers, graduated from the Saint Louis University School of Medicine in 1878 and returned home to practice alongside his father. He died from pneumonia at only 48 years old in 1902. “Following his death, community members frequently turned to Sarah for medical advice,” Patsy wrote. “She later remarried C.W. Brown and was known affectionately to the family as Grandma Brown or ‘Baw.’ She lived to the age of 98 before passing away in 1953.”

Patsy was unable to uncover some details, including what brought the Powers family down to Arkansas or the size of the area the doctors typically traveled. One of the biggest mysteries, however, involves a family who traveled to Mount Vernon and never left. “Dr. Justice Tavner Powers and Sarah were known for their immense generosity,” she wrote. “When the Warden family was traveling through Mount Vernon by wagon, they contracted malaria and passed away, leaving no money or burial arrangements. Dr. Powers and Sarah donated a plot in the Mount Vernon Community Cemetery and erected a monument that still stands today.” The large cast-iron monument stands next to the stone markers of both the doctors and their wives, but Patsy said she could never find any clues as to why her great-grandparents memorialized the family.

Finding information was not easy and she often leaned on the support of her son, Terry Brewer, who works in the information technology division at the University of Central Arkansas. “My mom was very excited to work on this, and she would call and ask questions,” he said. “I did things like helping her find things on the internet, scan documents, attaching things to emails and general tech support stuff like that. It makes you proud to be part of a family like this, people who like to help others.”

The spirit of helping those who need medical care is carried on today by Terry’s daughter and Patsy’s granddaughter, Amanda Brewer Murphy, manager of radiation oncology at CARTI. “Growing up with parents who were raised by people like my grandparents, who are constantly giving to other people, that’s why I chose to do what I do today,” she said. “I meet people in some of the worst times of their lives and try to make it the best experience it can be.”

Amanda leads a team of 50 at CARTI Cancer Center Conway, El Dorado, Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pine Bluff, as well as CARTI’s treatment facility in Searcy. She is an active radiation therapist herself, seeing patients daily. “This is our 50th year of caring for cancer patients,” she said. “CARTI started as a radiation therapy institute. Today, we are a multidisciplinary provider, with service lines that allow us to care for patients across their cancer journeys, from pre-diagnosis through survivorship.”

LEFT: Preserved among the Powers family’s medical artifacts, this madstone recalls a time when people believed such objects could draw poison from snakebites or the bites of rabid animals. RIGHT: Dr. Justice Tavner Powers followed his father into medicine, returning to Mount Vernon to practice alongside him.

Amanda said she wanted to go into the medical field after seeing CARTI care in action. “When I was in middle school my great-grandmother, Lois Powers, Patsy’s mother, was treated at CARTI Conway,” she said. “On Wednesdays, my day to get out of school early, I would go with them. The memories are just ingrained in my brain. My great-grandmother had very high standards and was not easy to please, but she never once had a bad thing to say about CARTI. She loved her care team.”

Amanda said each radiation machine treats about 50 patients a day and CARTI has eight machines. The care team becomes very invested in each patient’s life. “A typical cancer treatment is 30 to 45 treatments. When you see a patient for 30 to 45 days straight, they become your friend. That’s why I do it. I’m that listening ear, that person they can talk to. You are an unbiased person they can vent to. When they ring that bell on their last day, we all cheer and cry. Then, they come back year after year on those anniversaries of their last treatment, and then we know we are doing a good job.”

Amanda said she is proud to continue her family’s tradition of caring for others. “It’s been a very giving career to me,” she said “It’s very humbling because you get up and realize your bad day is not a bad day. I go to work every day where people are fighting for their lives.”

This family has proudly preserved that tradition of caring for others, passing it down through generations beginning more than 150 years ago.