Bertha's Sprinklings

Hopefully most of us know a bit about our great-great-grandmother Bertha Schneider, mother of great-grandma Alice Johnson. We will post her full story another time. But in short, she was a midwife in the prairies of Alberta, Canada, and was known as the “Angel of the Prairie” for both her skill and compassion in delivering hundreds of babies in those harsh conditions.

On a phone call with Grandma Matheson a couple of weeks ago, she began relating a story of Bertha that I had never heard before. Upon looking into it, I don’t think this is yet documented anywhere. And it is SUCH a cool story. Hold on to your seats, folks. Here goes: 

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In her profession of midwifery, one situation that did not sit well with Bertha, was the situation that occurred when stillborn babies were born to Catholic families. Since the babies were never baptized, the belief was that they were then damned souls and were not even allowed to be buried on the church grounds, but outside the church’s gates. Therefore, in addition to mourning the loss of their perfect little baby, they also carried the grief that the child was forever in a miserable state.

Bertha was a faithful latter-day saint woman, and believed that infants and children were blameless before God, and that baptism was therefore unnecessary for such. However, the pain of these Catholic families was so real. So, she approached a local Catholic leader, and *somehow * was granted the ability to baptize infants. Further, when a baby was stillborn, she would get a pot of extremely hot water and another of extremely cold water, and then would dunk the lifeless body back and forth until some slight flicker of a vital sign was shown—and baptize the baby on the spot. Though the baby wouldn’t live, the family then had the comfort of feeling that their baby was safe in the hands of God, and were able to give the child a proper burial on the church grounds.

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This story is such a beautiful indication of the compassion, tenacity, and grit of our dear grandma Bertha.