Postcards: Virginia Paine Smith

Dr. Virginia Paine Vineyard Smith was a female physician who came to Churchill County, along with her husband, Charles Carter Smith, a druggist, in 1903. What we know of her story sounds like a plot line developed for a contemporary Netflix series:  woman doctor serves on the frontier, delivering babies, administering to victims of smallpox, measles, pneumonia, appendicitis, cholera, typhoid, croup, and all varieties of injuries, while raising six children of her own. 

Smith’s story was researched by Bunny Corkill and Julie King and written up in an issue of “MuseNews,” published by the Churchill County Museum Association in 2015. Their article, “Medical Care in Churchill County 1860-1950” names many of our early medical doctors in the Valley and relates the details that are known about their practices.

According to Corkill and King, Smith, along with her husband and children, “homesteaded a 40-acre farm in the area of present-day Manchester Estates. They lived in an adobe home on what is now known as Adobe Road.”

Virginia, then in her early 60s, opened up a practice as a physician and surgeon. “By mid 1905 she had been appointed county physician and chairman of the board of health at the salary of $50 per month. In this position she campaigned untiringly against the unsanitary conditions in the town of Fallon.  She also made regular professional calls in the city and vicinity for $2.50.”

She faced enormous difficulties day by day in the effort to reach patients by horse and buggy. According to Corkill and King, “In 1908 the Churchill County Eagle reported, ’A horse attached to a buggy belonging to Mrs. V.P. Smith, M.D., ran away Wednesday afternoon. It ran past the Court House. Charles Wilson took after it on horseback. After running a block east it turned and came out on Maine Street between Popenoes’ and New River Hall. It jumped about 10 feet in the air and smashed things up in general. Wilson overtook and stopped the animal in front of the Eagle office.’”

Corkill and King recount how Smith wasn’t quite as fortunate five years later, when, after visiting a patient in Hazen, her “spirited young horse became frightened during the heavy wind storm and ran away.” She was thrown from the buggy, sustaining lacerations and bruises. “The freight train was coming toward Fallon about that time and the crew saw the horse running toward Hazen. Further on, they saw Dr. Smith lying near the track, waving at them to stop. She was taken in the coach and brought here, but had to be carried from the train to the auto which conveyed her to her home a couple of miles south west of town.” 

She recovered from her injuries, but her family later recalled that “because the weather was so cold and miserable, she had taken along her heavy bearskin robe to wrap around herself. They believed that if not for the bearskin, she would have been killed.”

Smith passed away on December 1,1923, after administering to countless patients in Churchill County. She was laid to rest next to her husband, Charles, who had died in 1917. Her friends and neighbors spoke of her as “brilliant.”

Thank you, Bunny and Julie, for sharing Smith’s story. 

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