Mary Alice

Mary Alice Walden was a renaissance woman. Born in the mid-1800s, she was the offspring of an illiterate Gypsy girl and the "black sheep" of a prosperous family. Alice, as she would come to be known, was educated by a wealthy relative and raised as a devout Christian. When she married, she and her husband moved from Illinois to Oregon, where he worked as a logger and she as a nurse/midwife in the logging camps along the Washington border. Alice was a strong, intelligent, talented, and resourceful woman who raised a large family while working and rescuing sick, injured, and/or lost souls.