Penny Armstrong papers, 1972-2023
Collection Scope and Content
The Penny Armstrong papers are composed of drafts and manuscripts, professional correspondence, news coverage, patient records, and personal items documenting Armstrong’s work among the Amish and Mennonite communities in Lancaster County, PA.
The collection includes drafts of essays, speeches, and the two books she co-wrote with Sheryl Feldman (A Midwife’s Story and A Wise Birth), as well as correspondence with editors, publishing staff, and readers.
The collection also contains hospital communications from throughout her nurse-midwifery education and practice, faculty awards from two of her teaching roles, and news coverage of her career, particularly the struggle over her permission to practice at Ephrata Community Hospital.
Other materials include photo slides and scrapbooks from her time in Lancaster County, an unpublished screenplay based on A Midwife’s Story, and audio/video recordings of speeches and interviews focused on Armstrong and on Lancaster County’s Plain sects.
Some materials in this collection are restricted.
Biographical/Historical Note
Penny (Bradbury) Armstrong was born in Houlton, Maine in 1946, spending her early childhood in Bridgewater and on her grandparents’ family farm in Hodgdon. Although her family moved frequently throughout her youth due to her father’s job as a commercial pilot, she has an enduring affinity for rural life, shaping her commitment to healthcare practice that is responsive to the needs of rural communities. Armstrong is best known for her work as a Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) serving the Amish and Mennonites in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, an experience that has informed her writing as well as her work in health education and advocacy.
Armstrong’s interest in midwifery began when, at the age of thirteen, she was enlisted by a local veterinarian to help a sheep deliver a malpresenting lamb, but it would be some time before she would pursue that career in earnest. After graduating from the University of Miami with a degree in psychology, she served for three years as a Federal Health Planner for Southern Maine Comprehensive Health specializing in drug abuse prevention. It was during her time as a Health Planner that she was introduced to nurse midwifery when she visited a rural health clinic staffed by a Family Nurse Practitioner and CNM. She then pursued her nursing prerequisites while also briefly entering police officer training in San Francisco, California and serving as Director of Activities at the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers. She received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1976 through St. Louis University School of Nursing’s accelerated program; this was followed by rigorous midwifery training at the College of Nursing and Midwifery in Glasgow, Scotland, where she earned her Registered Midwife certification in 1978 and entered the Registry of the Royal College of Midwives.
After completing training for foreign-trained nurse midwives at the Booth Maternity Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she became a CNM in 1979. She then immediately began working as a solo practitioner in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, attending home births as well as those in birth center and hospital settings. She also earned hospital privileges at Ephrata Community Hospital, despite dissent from several doctors. During this time, she enjoyed the support of her patients and their families, as well as that of her husband, Rich Armstrong. In 1981, a crew of Amish men raised a post and beam home for the Armstrongs, designed by Rich. It was that crew’s first house raising; previously, they had only raised the community’s barns.
During her time in Lancaster County, Armstrong held clinical teaching positions, supervising nurse-midwifery students at home births, for the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and at Case Western Reserve University. She earned her Master of Science in Nursing at Case Western Reserve University in 1993.
Moving on from her Pennsylvania practice, from 1991 to 1996, Armstrong taught students and preceptors in her role as the first Director of Clinical Education at the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing (now Frontier Nursing University) in Kentucky, where she educated students and preceptors in fifty states in the country’s first clinical distance education program, the Community-Based Nurse-Midwifery Education Program.
Armstrong’s work catching babies while immersed within the Amish and Mennonite communities contrasted strikingly with her experiences assisting hospital deliveries in St. Louis, Missouri and elsewhere, where she observed CNMs battle the medical establishment’s childbirth practices, as well as its general disdain for nurse midwifery. Seeking to raise public consciousness about midwifery, childbirth, and the power of culture to shape maternity experiences, she published two books, co-authored with Sheryl Feldman, that share the insights she gained throughout this work. A Midwife’s Story: Life, Love and Birth among the Amish (1986) recounts Armstrong’s journey from student midwife in Glasgow to running her own practice in rural Pennsylvania, while A Wise Birth: Bringing Together the Best of Natural Childbirth and Modern Medicine (1990) explores the politics of childbirth, discussing the myriad factors influencing how women give birth and providing information for those seeking greater autonomy in their birthing experience.
Some years and 1,400 births after beginning her work in Pennsylvania, Armstrong returned to her home state of Maine. Having spent her entire nurse midwifery career advocating for improvements in the way birth was conducted, she continued to act on her commitment to better healthcare. She volunteered for a time with the Maine Humanities Council, serving on the Planning Committee for “Literature and Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Healthcare,” an in-hospital reading and discussion program open to all who worked in the hospital system. This experience informed her contributions to her third book, A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology (2001), co-edited with Robert Coles, Randy Testa, and Joseph O’Donnell.
During this time, Armstrong also worked for the University of New England (UNE) College of Osteopathic Medicine as Project Director of the Behavioral Science and Community Health Curriculum Project. At UNE, she co-taught courses on topics such as Film & Medicine and Behavioral Change for the medical school and visited undergraduate courses on women’s health to share her expertise on midwifery and childbirth. She then worked as the Quality Assurance Officer for Health Dialog, working to improve chronic disease management and surgical decision-making and leading their National Committee for Quality Assurance accreditation. She also traveled abroad, teaching midwifery in Somaliland and medical English in Vietnam.
Armstrong now lives in Scarborough, Maine, where she practices year-round ocean swimming and competes in International Ice Swimming Association meets.