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Orleana Hawks Puckett was an American midwife in the mountains of Patrick and Carroll County, Virginia. She helped deliver more than 1,000 babies, of which she never lost a mother or a child. In 2012 Puckett was posthumously honored as one of the Library of Virginia's "Virginia Women in History".[1]Puckett served as a midwife from 1889 until 1938, a year before she died. She started being a midwife after she herself had lost 24 children. Reasons for these deaths are unclear, some say she or her husband murdered them,[2] but a more likely reason is that she had a disease what infected the baby, like Rh hemolytic disease.[1] Most of her children were stillborn, and if they did live, they only survived for a few days. Even though she was unable successfully to have children, or maybe because of that, she decided to assist her neighbors in Carroll County during childbirth. She was almost 50 years old when she started her “practice”, on a completely voluntarily basis.[1] It is said she helped deliver over a thousand babies and that none of them or their mothers died. But since there are no records of this, it is hard to tell if this is true. The last delivery she assisted was that of Maxwell Hawks, on August 30, 1938.[3]Since Puckett herself was illiterate, the spelling her first name is uncertain. In 1913, when she applied for a pension because her husband had served in the Confederate Army, the notary filled in "Orleana". Some of the different names are Orlean, Orlena, Aulina or even Pauline.[1]Her last home was a timy one-room wood cabin hardly larger than an average dining room; it has been preserved by the National Park Service and may be seen along the Blue Ridge Parkway at mile 189.9.The Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, continues in her legacy to care for mother and child. They promote and try to strengthen the development of child, parent and family.