Myrah Keating Smith
US Virgin Islands nurse and midwife (1908-1994)
Myrah Keating Smith (June 1, 1908 – May 4, 1994) was a pioneering nurse and midwife on the island of Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands. For almost two decades, she was the only provider of health care on St. John. In 1983, the Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center was named in her honor and in 2005, she was inducted into the Virgin Islands Women's Hall of Fame.
Early life
Myrah Athenia Keating was born as a twin with her sister Andromeada, on June 1, 1908, on the island of Saint Thomas in the Danish West Indies to Eugenia Theodora and Zephaniah Keating. She and her sister were raised in Lovanto Cay, on Saint John by her mother and step-father, Edward Moorehead, Sr. They first attended a school organized in the parlor of the home of Mrs. Anderson and taught by Sylvanie Sewer. There were only eighteen students who enrolled and when the teacher found it difficult to commute from Cruz Bay, the school was closed and the twins were taught at home by their stepfather. At the age of fourteen, Keating traveled to New York City by boat, and then via train for three more days to continue her education at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
“Myrah Keating Smith” enters the record as uS Virgin Islands nurse and midwife (1908-1994). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Myrah, Keating and Smith can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Myrah Keating Smith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.