Frontier Nursing. Mary Breckinridge founded the Frontier Nursing Service, 1925. Midwives from England helped to bring medical service that saved hundreds of mothers and babies of "remote hollows and hills of Clay, Leslie and Perry counties." 1928, a 28-bed hospital opened in Hyden and in 1939 Frontier Graduate School of Midwifery founded, one of three such schools in U.S. Erected September 27, 1963. For more information, see ExploreKYHistory: Frontier Nursing Service