A few days ago I shared the old Bradham homeplace in Chinquapin, down in Duplin County—the house where Caleb Bradham was born before he went on to New Bern, opened his pharmacy, and created the drink the world would come to know as Pepsi-Cola. Y’all showed that little piece of forgotten North Carolina history a lot of love. That same farmhouse has another story, though, and it belongs to Caleb’s little sister, Josephine Bradham Burton.
She was the first registered nurse in the United States.
That’s a pretty impressive thing for a girl from Chinquapin, North Carolina, to accomplish at the turn of the twentieth century.
Josephine was born on February 16, 1875, to George Washington and Julia Bradham, eight years after her older brother Caleb. On July 3, 1894, at just nineteen years old, she married Joel Burton, another Duplin County native. That makes Josephine family to us, too. Joel was a Burton, which makes her one of Brandon’s aunts. The marriage didn’t last, and the two were divorced by 1910, but that doesn’t change much around here. Divorced, widowed, or whatever else life might bring, once you’re somebody’s aunt, you’re somebody’s aunt. I love finding those little connections between the people we read about in history books and the folks sitting right there on our own family tree.
But Josephine’s story goes well beyond a family connection.
In the 1890s, a young woman from rural Duplin County didn’t exactly have a world of opportunities waiting for her. Most weren’t packing their bags and heading off to a major city to pursue a professional education. Josephine did just that. On March 1, 1899, four and a half years after her marriage, she entered the nursing program at Philadelphia Hospital. She graduated on April 1, 1902, from what was considered one of the finest nursing schools in the country.
Think about that for a minute. Here was a young woman from eastern North Carolina, traveling all the way to Philadelphia to train for a profession that was still developing into what we know today. Meanwhile, her big brother Caleb was back home in New Bern, working as a pharmacist and building the business that would eventually give the world Pepsi-Cola. I’d love to know what those two talked about in their letters. One was helping shape the future of nursing, and the other was mixing up a drink that would become an international name.
And then North Carolina made history.
On March 3, 1903, the North Carolina State Nurses’ Association successfully pushed legislation through the General Assembly that Governor Charles Aycock signed into law. North Carolina became the first state in the nation to establish a system for registering nurses.
Under the new law, a nurse could go before the Clerk of Court in the county where she intended to practice, present a diploma from a reputable nursing school, and have her name entered into the official Nurses Registry kept at the courthouse.
Registration was scheduled to begin on June 5, 1903. The nursing association already had its first nurse picked out for the honor: Mary Rose Batterham of Asheville, a woman who had worked hard to establish the new law. The Buncombe County Clerk of Court even opened his office an hour early that morning to ensure she could be the first to register.
Batterham went on to receive recognition for that distinction throughout her life. She was celebrated in nursing publications, honored at meetings, and remembered as the first registered nurse in the United States in her 1927 eulogy.
There was just one little problem.
Josephine Bradham Burton had already beaten her to it.
Knowing about the new law, Josephine went to the Craven County Clerk of Court’s office in New Bern on June 4, 1903. She presented her diploma from Philadelphia Hospital, and the clerk entered her name into the registry. That was a day before registration was officially scheduled to begin.
And then life went on.
There’s no evidence that Josephine realized the historical significance of what she had done. As far as anyone can tell, neither did her brother Caleb, the clerk, or anybody else involved. She walked into a courthouse, presented her credentials, and became the first nurse registered under the new system. No celebration. No newspaper headlines. No place in the history books. Just a name written in a courthouse ledger.
It would take decades for somebody to discover what had happened.
In 1938, the secretary of the North Carolina Board of Nurse Examiners wrote to clerks of court across the state requesting lists of registered nurses. When the response came back from Craven County, there it was: Josephine Burton, registered on June 4, 1903, a full day before Mary Rose Batterham.
The discovery came as a surprise to the nursing community. The state nurses’ association had never heard of Josephine. When officials contacted Philadelphia Hospital to learn more about her, the school reported that it hadn’t heard from Mrs. Burton since she graduated. Her student records offered one important clue. She had listed her home as New Bern and her nearest relative as her brother, Dr. C.D. Bradham.
That was Caleb Bradham.
For years, though, the trail went cold.
But Josephine didn’t just disappear. Within two years of registering in New Bern, she was living in New York City, and the 1905 New York State census lists her there as Josephine Burton, working as a nurse. The historians who later wrote about her said there was no evidence she ever practiced. The records say otherwise. Josephine didn’t just earn the title. She lived it.
Josephine’s life was tragically short. After her divorce, she went back to her maiden name, Bradham. In 1917, she died in New York City from complications after surgery. She was only forty-two years old. Today, she rests in the Bradham family plot in New Bern, buried under the name Josephine Bradham.
She never knew she had made history.
Even now, historians speak about it a little carefully, simply because so little has been known about her life. But North Carolina put the matter into the official record. In 2003, a resolution adopted by the North Carolina General Assembly recognized Josephine Burton of Craven County as the first registered nurse in the United States on June 4, 1903.
A hundred years after she walked into that courthouse, the state made it official.
I keep coming back to that young woman from Chinquapin. Imagine the determination it took to leave home, travel to Philadelphia, complete a demanding nursing program, and come home with her diploma in hand, ready to build a life in a profession that was only beginning to find its footing. Then imagine paying attention to a new state law closely enough to be standing at the courthouse counter before anybody else in the country.
That took grit, y’all. And it took a willingness to step into a world that looked a whole lot different from the one she grew up in.
Every time we talk about North Carolina history, I’m reminded of just how many remarkable people have slipped through the cracks. We remember the famous names, the big inventions, and the stories that made the newspapers. But sometimes the people who helped change the world were simply going about their business, doing something they believed was worth doing, without ever realizing how far their footsteps would reach.
That old farmhouse in Chinquapin gave the world two people who left their mark in very different ways. Caleb Bradham gave us Pepsi-Cola, a name recognized around the world. His little sister, Josephine, helped pave the way for every registered nurse who came after her. One became a household name. The other died without ever knowing she’d made history.
Josephine Bradham Burton was a country girl from Duplin County who deserves to be remembered, not just as Caleb Bradham’s little sister, but as a North Carolina woman who got there first.
Sometimes the biggest pieces of history come from the smallest places. And sometimes, all it takes to find them is a little digging around in your own backyard.
