One of the main tasks of the State Digital Archives folks in Cheney has been digitizing records dating back many decades or even a century ago. A very recent accomplishment deals with registered nurses licensing files.

Back in 1909, our state Legislature passed a law that codified requirements for professional nurses. It required nurses to meet education requirements, pass an examination and apply to be a registered nurse. Digital Archives has digitized and indexed these nurses’ applications from 1909-17. They are now available for research here .

Information included in these applications includes name, date of birth, education, nursing experience, residence, school of graduation, and more. The majority of application files include the handwritten application and photographs. Some files include additional correspondence.

Miss Mathilde C. Ankerson (whose image is featured here) is the first nurse application found in the collection, registered on August 27, 1909. According to Mathilde’s application, she graduated in 1901 from the Children’s Hospital and Training School for Nurses in San Francisco, CA. She took her licensing exam in Seattle in September 1909; and would have been the first Washington nurse to do so.

Thanks go to Roger Easton for indexing, Rachel Thompson for proofing and associating images, and Desiree McKnight for digitization.

For those of you who saw the exhibit at Washington State History Museum entitled, “Nurses at your Service: A Century of Caring”, which closed earlier this summer, this collection makes an interesting follow-up.

August 26 correction: The indexing and digitizing for this project was done at the State Archives office in Olympia, not in Cheney. After the indexing and digitizing process was finished, the material was sent to Digital Archives in Cheney, where it was put online.