Between the 1920s and 1940s, hundreds of debutantes signed up to be horse-riding couriers for the Frontier Nursing Service, a network of nurse-midwives in the rural mountains of Kentucky. Smithsonian Magazine tells the story of what they did, and why. "They got to wear pants, they got to act independently,” historian Melanie Beals Goan explains, adding that couriers were “really clinging to this idea of a nostalgic, isolated place where traditional American values continue to survive. Part of [the couriers’] adventure is the idea that they’re escaping from [parental] authority, but also that they’re going to go back in time to this really quaint place.”
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