BIOGRAPHY: Dr. Romania (Bunnell) Pratt; state of Utah

Transcribed by W. David Samuelsen
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EXPIRED COPYRIGHT (1884)

REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN OF DESERET

A BOOK OF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES TO ACCOMPANY THE PICTURE BEARING THE SAME
TITLE.

COMPILED AND WRITTEN BY AUGUSTA JOYCE CROCHERON
MRS. ROMANIA B. PRATT, M. D. 

     Romania Bwrnell Pratt, daughter of Luther B. and Esther Mendenhall
Bunnell, was born August 8, 1839, in Washington, Wayne County, Indiana. In her
seventh year she went with her parents to Nauvoo, and had the privilege of
visiting the Temple, and went with the Church to Winter Quarters. She says:
"While there I well remember being present when the martial band was marching
round and the call was made for the Mormon Batallion for Mexico. Although too
young to appreciate the severe ordeal our devoted and persecuted people were
subject to, I can never forget the feeling of grief which oppressed my little
heart, as one after one the brave-hearted men fell into the ranks." From
Winter Quarters her parents moved to Ohio where her whole time was spent in
attending school, the last year and a half at the Crawfordsville Female
Seminary. In 1855, her mother then being a widow, with her family of two girls
and two boys and their worldly effects. again joined the Saints at Atchison,
now Omaha, where she was first baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of
LatterDay Saints, on the last of May, 1855, just before commencing their
journey with ox teams across the plains to Salt Lake City. where they arrived
September 3d of the same year. The summer journey of these months was a series
of changing panoramic scenes as enchanting to the free, careless heart of a
child, as it was arduous to those of maturer years. Their arrival in the city
of the Saints was during the grasshopper famine, when flour was twenty-five
dollars per hundred weight, sugar forty cents per pound and everything in
proportion, and although they had left plenty behind them, in the hands of
guardians who refused to allow them any money, (the children all being minors)
to come away among the Mormons, saying; They will rob you of it all as soon as
you get there." In consequence of this predjudice they arrived in Salt Lake
City penniless and at a time when they with thousands of others had to learn
the sweetness of the coarsest kind of bread. Romania taught day school and
gave music lessons on the piano at intervals until she entered the medical
profession. This lady was married to Parley P. Pratt, son of the Apostle,
Parley P. Pratt, by President Brigham Young, and has had seven children;
Parley P. Pratt, Luther B., Louis L., Corinne T., Mark C., Irwin E. and Roy B.
Pratt. Her second son died in infancy, and her lovely daughter died when
twenty months old.

     Through a love of literary pursuit and surrounding circumstances her
attention was turned to the medical profession which she entered in 1873 and
graduated in the Woman's Medical College of Philadelphia in March, 1877. After
graduating she remained in Philadelphia and took special courses on the eye
and ear at Wills' Hospital and a dispensary on Chestnut Street, conducted by
Dr. George Strawbridge. Leaving Philadelphia she spent a few weeks visiting
Hydropatbic institutions to learn something of the mode of administration and
especially of water treatment.

     Immediately on her arrival home she by request commenced giving lectures
to ladies and agitated the question of a hospital for women and children, and
by counsel on account of great demand of obstetrical aid needed in the
numerous settlements, soon instituted a school of midwifery, and has taught
two classes a year since, except when absent for special study in the New York
Eye and Ear Infirmary where she spent eight months in 1881-2.

     In 1874, when Eliza R. S. Smith organized the Young Ladies' Mutual
Improvement Association of the Twelfth Ward, Mrs. Pratt was appointed
President, which position she held though absent a portion of the time, until
professional work compelled her resignation. She now holds the office of
Treasurer of the Salt Lake Stake organization of the Young Ladies Mutual
Improvement Association, and is also one of the Board of Executors and medical
attendant of the Deseret Hospital, organized 1882, beside having a busy
practice Luther B. Bunnell, her father, was the inventor of a repeating fire
arm, and at a critical period in the persecutions of the Saints; donated to
them five hundred dollars in arms, and ammunition. Tracing her family record a
few years back, we find in her mother's line the names of Bayard Taylor and
Benjamin West among her relatives. About the year 1837, a small pamphlet was
published in Philadelphia giving the geneaology of her family, tracing thern
back to a Russian nobleman. Captain Mendenhail was the grandson of Benjamin,
brother to John Mendenhall, the Puritan emigrant. Colonel Richard Thomas,
brother to her great grandmother, was a member of Congress from Chester
County, Pa., for many years. Of medical members, Dr. Pratt's family certainly
has had a goodly number, and of these we select - Dr. Mendenhall, of
Richmond, Indiana, her mother's cousin, Dr. Marmaduke Mendenhall, of North
Carolina, her cousin, Dr. Paris Mendenhall, her brother, Dr. James R.
Mendenhall, of, Richmond, Indiana, her cousin, Nereus, Mendenhail, professor
in New Garden Quaker College, also George D. and William Mendenhall,
physicians. Beside these, many others of note occur, too many for less than a
special volume. Her eldest son, Parley P. Pratt, also entered the New York
School of Pharmacy, from which he expects to graduate in the spring of 1885.

     Dr. Pratt is in appearance the very embodiment of health and happiness,
her blooming cheeks, abundant loose ringlets without a line of gray, her dark
eyes inspiring the dispirited with cheerfulness and hope, the cordial clasp of
hand, a hand gentle, but somehow suggestive of the nerve, firmness,
selfpossession and power the true healer holds, the intuition one receives of
her sympathy and benevolence, if needed; all these are conveyed as upon an
open page by the very presence of Dr. Dr. Pratt. Also, that other influence is
felt that she too leans upon a higher power than human skill, the same Giver
of life and health as the tenderest child looks up to.

     Dr. Romania B. Pratt was the first "Mormon" woman graduate. Following
her return as graduate, next came Dr. Ellis R. Shipp, 1878, Mattie Paul
Hughes, M. D., 1883, Elvira S. Barney, M. D., 1883, and Margaret 0. Shipp, M.
D., 1883. Drs. R. B. Pratt, Ellis R. Shipp and Elvira S. Barney are connected
with the Deseret Hospital, founded in 1882.