Bethenia Owens-Adair papers, 1869-1921

Bethenia Owens-Adair was born in 1840 in Van Buren County, Missouri, and came with her family to the Oregon Territory in 1843. At age 14, she married Legrand Henderson Hill, and she became a mother at age 16. At age 19, she divorced Hill, took back her birth surname of Owens, and pursued an education. She supported herself and her son George as a domestic worker, a teacher, a milliner, and then as a physician. In 1874, she graduated from the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania, becoming one of the first women working as doctors in Oregon to hold a medical degree. In 1880, she earned a second medical degree from the University of Michigan.

Owens-Adair practiced medicine in Roseburg, Oregon; in Portland, Oregon; and in Clatsop County, Oregon. Later, she worked in North Yakima, Washington, where her son was also a physician. She retired from medical practice at the age of 65. In 1884, she remarried to John Adair; the couple divorced in 1907.

Owens-Adair was active in multiple reform causes, including the temperance movement, the women's suffrage movement, and women's education. She was also active in the eugenics movement and advocated for the involuntary sterilization of people she described as "unfit." Her advocacy led to the passage of involuntary sterilization laws in Oregon; the final incarnation of the involuntary sterilization law passed in 1923 and remained in force until its repeal in 1983. Owens-Adair died in 1926.

Source: "Bethenia Owens-Adair (1840-1926)," by Jean M. Ward, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/bethenia_owens_adair_1840_1926/; "Oregon Anti-Sterilization League," by Josh Freeman, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/oregon_anti-sterilization_league/