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Ionia R. Whipper, Prairie View, Texas to [Blanche M. Haines], June 10, 1928

Weekly report for weeks ending June 2 and 9. Includes 2 page list of “Midwives in Washington County [Texas]”, by name & town.

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Records of the United States Children's Bureau

The United States Children's Bureau was the first US federal agency to focus on the health and well-being of children and their mothers. Founded in 1912, it played a major role in the development of the early US welfare state.

Many of the items reproduced here concern the work of Dr. Ionia Rollin Whipper (1872-1953), an African-American obstetrician who graduated from Howard University Medical School in 1903. During the 1920s, Dr. Whipper traveled throughout the South teaching midwives to register the births they attended.

Not all of the items here are fully described yet.

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Panel Discussion: the Reduction of Fraud in the Use of Vital Records, Held in the Abbey Hotel, New York City, New York, Friday, June 2, 1961

New York State birth certificate with message to parents, 1903/1919

This birth certificate for the unnamed-at-birth child of Louis Ganzmann and Anna Bosinger Ganzmann of Buffalo, New York, was issued in 1919 for a birth that took place in 1903. Because this particular copy was issued around their son's 16th birthday, it seems likely that it was used for acquiring a work permit under the relatively new child labor laws.

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