Breaking Tradition

Bethenia Owens-Adair (1840-1926) made the overland journey from Missouri to Oregon with her family in 1843. As a result, she did not begin her formal education until she was twelve years old. Her studies were interrupted when her family moved from Astoria to Roseburg. She was married at the age of fourteen to one of her father's farmhands. After she divorced her husband in 1859, she finished her education while working to support herself and her son George.

In 1867, she returned to Roseburg, Oregon and opened a millinery shop. Her business was successful, but after six years she decided to attend medical school in the east. She left her son with Abigail Scott Duniway, the editor of the New Northwest, a woman's suffragist journal that Owens-Adair read frequently and she completed her medical degree at the Eclectic Medical College in Philadelphia in 1874. In 1880 she finished her M.D. at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Owens-Adair returned to Portland in 1881 and set up a successful medical practice. In 1884 she married Col. John Adair. The couple moved to Astoria where she continued to practice medicine and help with the family farm. She died in Astoria in 1926.

Throughout her career Owens-Adair was active in many social movements including women's suffrage. She coordinated a visit and lecture of Susan B. Anthony to Roseburg, Oregon in 1871 and she worked as a subscription agent for the New Northwest from 1871 to 1887. She is also known for her controversial thoughts on human sterilization of criminals and institutionalized mental patients in Oregon. Owens-Adair believed that insanity and criminal action were hereditary. Thus, she argued for mandatory sterilization of the criminally insane. Her famous work on the subject, Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects (1922) brought her recognition in the field. In 1925, the sterilization statute was adopted as state law in Oregon.

Owens-Adair endured and overcame many social condemnations throughout her life. Though her divorce in 1859, her desire to study medicine, and her work with women's suffrage and sterilization were met with disapproval from friends and relatives alike, Owens-Adair endured and held fast to her own beliefs.