Mary Blanche Waterman was only four years old when her family moved to Lakin in December of 1880. Her father, James Waterman, had accepted the position as agent for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. The family of four, which included Blanche’s two-year-old brother, boarded with the Boylan family until the new railroad section house was completed in 1881. Then they made their home there. There were few houses in Lakin at the time and even fewer playmates for the little girl. The vast and rambling landscape was quite different than what Blanche was used to in Worchester, N.Y. where she was born. In her own words, her back yard, “reached north to where the sky met the earth.”
Blanche was given strict limits to just how far she was allowed to roam in that expansive back yard. Three boys built a playhouse from a big wooden packing box and other smaller boxes, and the house was just big enough for those three youngsters to squeeze in. After they drifted off to other adventures, the playhouse became a delightful refuge for little Blanche and her dolls. When indoors, the young girl listened intently to her mama’s stories. “Our treeless, hill-less, stoneless and usually snowless prairie made a large screen on which these word pictures were painted.”
When Blanche grew older, she frequently volunteered at the town’s social events. She belonged to the Lakin Literary Society and was known for giving excellent recitations. Miss Waterman attended Lakin schools, and when the spring semester ended in 1893, she moved temporarily to Wichita to take classes at the short-lived Garfield College. When she returned to start her senior year at Lakin High School, the practical-minded, respected and highly responsible Blanche was elected school librarian.
Inspired by Doc Lovin who cared for the sick and had a drug store here, she left the plains of Kansas after her graduation for Chicago where she earned her medical degree in 1899 from Northwestern University. She interned at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital before being appointed as the college physician at Blue Mountain Female Institute in Tippah County, Mississippi. “Dr. Waterman, the lady physician at the college is an expert in her profession and is rapidly making friends. . . as an expert surgeon she has already gained an enviable reputation and received many flattering offers from different state and local institutions where lady physicians are required,” raved a Tippah County newspaper. Dr. Sanford worked at Blue Mountain for three years. In 1903, she joined the Salvation Army and was placed in charge of a maternity hospital in Tappan, N.Y.
The good doctor never forgot her Lakin roots and spent many summers and vacations here, often having charge of the practice of local physician Dr. George Johnston in his absence. When Mrs. Ross Elvin and her seven children were struck by a train at the railroad crossing east of Lakin in 1919, it was Dr. Sanford with the assistance of Dr. Lena June Madison Hull who set the bones and cared for the five surviving children until Dr. Johnston’s return.
Dressed modestly in her blue Salvation Army suit and carrying a spray of lilies of the valley, the good doctor married Ensign Hobart Sanford on September 1, 1908. Blanche was a captain in the Salvation Army by that time and the head of a rescue mission in Buffalo, New York, and her husband had been in the Salvation Army since 1901. It was a mutual interest in the organization’s work that led to their courtship and eventual marriage.
Hobart’s service with the Salvation Army led the couple to various cities along the eastern seaboard, but they made their home at Mount Vernon, New York for around 20 years. Hobart retired as a commanding brigadier after dedicating over 40 years of service to the Salvation Army. After his retirement, the Sanfords moved to Methuen, Massachusetts, but retirement did not rest easy for Hobart. A year and a half later, he was back with the Salvation Army in Cleveland, OH. When Dr. Sanford retired from active service with the Salvation Army, she accepted an appointment as resident physician at Mahoning County Tuberculosis Hospital in Youngstown, OH, where she worked for three and a half years.
In 1966, Dr. Sanford died at Orlando, Florida where she was spending the winter. She was 89 years old. Brig. Sanford died at the age of 97 at Asbury Park, New Jersey nine years later. They were the parents of one son and three daughters. Their son was a career serviceman with the U.S. Air Corps and daughter Ruth, like her parents, made her career in the Salvation Army.
During Women’s History Month, we honor Dr. Mary Blanche Sanford for her compassion, bravery, service and selflessness. She is but one example of the many fine women who grew up in Kearny County and made significant contributions to society.
SOURCES: History of Kearny County Vols. I and II; Ancestry.com; Findagrave; Museum archives and archives of the Franklin Repository, Mount Vernon Argus, Allegheny Mail, Orlando Sentinel, Asbury Park Press, Kearny County Advocate, Lakin Index, and Lakin Pioneer Democrat.