Margaret Allen Martin — “The Nurse of El Rito”
Margaret Allen Martin was a professionally trained registered nurse who served El Rito for years and became so closely identified with village health care that the local health center was eventually named in her honor. The title “The Nurse of El Rito” is therefore historically defensible, not merely an exhibit flourish.
From Ireland to St. Vincent Hospital
Margaret Allen was born in Ireland. I have not yet established her exact birth date, birthplace, parents, immigration date, or the nursing school from which she graduated. Those are now among the most important records to pursue.
What we can establish is that she came to New Mexico already associated with professional nursing. Her son John Martin's 2014 obituary states specifically that his mother was an Irish nurse who came to Santa Fe to work at St. Vincent Hospital. That is an important piece of evidence because it places Margaret inside one of northern New Mexico's principal medical institutions before she became associated with El Rito.
This was not simply a later family memory that she had “helped sick people.” Another Martin-family obituary describes Margaret explicitly as “a registered nurse in the village.”
That distinction matters.
Margaret Martin was an RN practicing in rural northern New Mexico during an era when professional medical care was difficult to obtain outside Santa Fe, Española and a handful of other population centers.
Marriage and the first El Rito years
Margaret married George Martin in 1912. According to their grandson Michael Martin, George had come west after attending Manhattan College and became associated with the newly established Spanish American Normal School at El Rito. Michael remembered his grandmother as Irish-born and affectionately known within the family as “Dambo.”
George and Margaret initially lived in El Rito. In 1914 the family moved to Pueblo, Colorado, after George's tenure at the Normal School ended. They remained away for approximately eleven years and returned to El Rito around 1925. George subsequently became involved with John Sargent in the general store that eventually became Martin's Store.
The Martins raised five children: Tom, Roberta, George, John and Pat. Their family eventually became woven into several major pieces of twentieth-century El Rito history—education, Martin's Store, ranching and health care.
But Margaret's story deserves to stand independently of George's.
The village nurse
After the Martins returned to El Rito, Margaret practiced nursing in the village.
John Martin's obituary says plainly:
“Margaret Martin worked as a nurse in El Rito.”
That statement is independently reinforced by the obituary of her daughter-in-law JoAnn Martin, which identifies Margaret as a registered nurse in the village.
Michael Martin's family recollection goes further. He remembered his grandmother as the woman who ran a Maternal and Child Health Care Center in El Rito.
That is where Margaret's story becomes especially important.
She appears to represent the bridge between two eras of medical care in El Rito: an older period in which sick people, pregnant women and children were cared for largely in their homes, and the emerging twentieth-century system of organized public-health nursing, maternal care and rural clinics.
Nursing before there was a clinic on every highway
To understand what Margaret's work meant, we have to forget modern expectations of health care.
El Rito families did not simply get into a car, drive twenty minutes to an urgent-care clinic, receive laboratory tests and pick up prescriptions at a pharmacy.
Roads could be poor. Winter travel could be difficult. Cars were comparatively scarce during Margaret's early years in El Rito. Telephone service was limited. Medical specialists were distant.
A nurse who actually lived in the village occupied a very different position from a modern clinic employee.
People knew where she lived.
They knew her family.
Someone could come to the house or send a child for her.
A neighbor could arrive and say that a baby was sick, a woman was having difficulty after childbirth, a child had developed a fever, or somebody had suffered an injury on a ranch.
New Mexico began developing organized public-health nursing in the early twentieth century. Maternal and infant care became especially important after federal and state programs expanded during the 1920s and 1930s. Public-health nurses traveled enormous distances, conducted home visits and worked alongside the traditional community midwives—parteras—who still delivered many New Mexico babies.
Margaret was practicing in exactly that world.
And El Rito eventually became unusually important in rural maternal health.
The El Rito Maternal and Child Health Center
There is evidence that a formal maternal-and-child-health project was established in El Rito by the mid-1940s. Professional nursing records identify an El Rito Health Center operating by 1946 and identify Nancy J. Wamsley as a nurse-midwife associated with it.
Margaret had already become El Rito's resident professional nurse. As state and federal maternal-health programs expanded, formal maternal-and-child services were established in the village. Family testimony associates Margaret directly with that center, while professional records show additional trained medical personnel serving there.
That is actually a richer story than simply calling her a midwife.
Margaret seems to have been part of the transformation of El Rito's health care from village nursing into organized rural public health.
The Margaret Allen Martin Health Center
And then I found what may become the centerpiece of the entire exhibit.
Indexed records of the Santa Fe New Mexican from August 1966 refer to the El Rito facility as the:
Margaret Allen Martin Health Center
One surviving newspaper index specifically says the naming was made:
“in appreciation of Mrs. Martin's years of nursing service”
to families in El Rito.
A second August 1966 newspaper reference describes the El Rito health center as being dedicated in memory of Margaret Martin.
That is enormously significant.
It means Margaret's reputation as El Rito's nurse was not reconstructed decades later by descendants. Her service was formally recognized by the community and health authorities within living memory of her work.
A remarkable historical position
Margaret's significance becomes clearer when the pieces are assembled chronologically.
- Ireland: Born and apparently received or began her professional nursing preparation there or elsewhere before New Mexico; exact details remain unknown.
- Before 1912: Came to Santa Fe and worked as a nurse at St. Vincent Hospital.
- 1912: Married George Martin.
- 1912–1914: Lived in El Rito during George's Normal School period.
- 1914–1925: Martin family lived in Pueblo, Colorado.
- 1925 onward: Returned permanently to El Rito; Margaret practiced nursing in the village.
- 1940s: Organized maternal-and-child-health services developed in El Rito; family memory specifically associates Margaret with the Maternal and Child Health Care Center.
- By 1966: The health center was formally associated with her name, honoring her years of service to El Rito families.