Anna Margaretha Auer Picklemann List

Midwifery

First midwife in Frankenmuth, Michigan

Amy French

Image: Ancestry.com

1821

Germany

1906

Midwife

Anna Margaretha Auer was an orphan who studied at the Loehe Institute in Neuendettelsau, Germany before emigrating to the United States and becoming one of the founding families of Frankenmuth, Michigan. She married John Picklemann on the ship over to the United States in 1845. Thirteen years after Picklemann's death, she married another founding member of the town, Johann Georg List. She gave birth to ten children, as well as oversaw the births of 61 of her 62 grandchildren. In all, Auer delivered more than 800 babies and never lost a mother or child. Her obituary described her as a "most lovable woman, highly educated, with a kindly disposition, and was loved and respected by all especially the sick, to whom she was a ministering Angel, having been called to their bedsides when medical men of any description were scarce in the wilderness, and as the years passed became noted as a midwife." (Death of a Pioneer, The Frankenmuth News, October 18, 1906)

For historical information on midwifery, see Laural Thatcher Ulrich "A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812." (Vintage Books, Random House Publishers, 1991).