Did You Know: Frances Payne Bolton

In honor of Women’s History Month, we are highlighting women who made an impact on Case Western Reserve University and their respective fields.

By Jacey Kepich

Frances Payne Bolton

While we can all be grateful for medical professionals—and especially in light of current events—it seems fitting during Women’s History Month to recognize the health care leader whose name graces our nationally renowned nursing program: Frances Payne Bolton.

With a half-million dollar gift in the 1920s, Bolton’s support for Western Reserve University’s nursing school was one of the largest endowments of its kind. The school had actually begun as the College for Women’s department of Nursing Education in 1921, but became a separate college in 1923 with Bolton’s funding. Through a five-year program that combined traditional college studies with specialized medical training, students obtained a diploma of nursing and bachelor’s degree. Elements of the program included use of a “diet kitchen,” where students planned and arranged trays of balanced meals, as well as two life-sized dolls that served as practice hospital patients. (Curious to learn more about nursing curriculum from Bolton’s time? View a snapshot summary on page 32 of Western Reserve University’s 1926 yearbook, Nihon.)

Not only did Bolton carve out her legacy in health sciences; she went on to serve as Ohio’s first congresswoman, among other distinctions. After her husband, Chester Castle Bolton, died in 1939 while serving as a Republican congressman from Cleveland, Frances Payne Bolton served out his term and won the seat in a special election in 1940.

Among her legislative accomplishments was winning support for the Nurse Cadet Corps through The Bolton Act, a program that led to federal subsidy for nursing education. Nursing, Frances Payne Bolton declared, was the “number one service for women, not only in a time of war when hundreds of thousands of men’s lives depend upon nursing care, but also in peacetime—for the nurse is not only caring for the sick but also teaching health.”

Despite all her time spent in Washington, Frances Payne Bolton is said to have maintained personal contact with student nurses over the years, attending capping ceremonies, graduation exercises, teas and receptions at the school and even entertaining students at her home.

Read more about Frances Payne Bolton, health care reformer, congresswoman and philanthropist.