Night had fallen.

The young woman secured the newborn in the leather saddle bag and began to navigate her horse deeper into the woods of Eastern Kentucky’s Appalachian Mountains. On a good night, the terrain was unstable, wet, rocky, with brambles and narrow winding passages, but tonight, there was a light rain, making it slippery and marshy, in places treacherous. She was undeterred and determined to reach her destination, Hyden Hospital, before the rain grew heavier and the baby’s breathing grew worse.

As she moved through the woods, keeping the horse’s gait measured, she had nothing but time and her thoughts. The road to this moment had been long. It was one her parents didn’t imagine for their daughter. But, from a young age, Mary Carson Breckinridge was her own person: charismatic, iron-willed, and eager to carve out a life on her terms.

Born in 1881 in Memphis, TN to a politically influential family with a history of statesmen, members of Congress, ambassadors, and her grandfather, John Breckinridge, a U.S. vice-president, Mary enjoyed a privileged upbringing. Her father was the U.S. ambassador to Czar Nicholas II of Russia, enabling him to give her a sophisticated education that included private tutors, finishing school, travel, and attendance at historic political affairs—in the Spring of 1896, he took the family to the Coronation  of the Czar, a trip that altered the course of Mary’s life.

In the Kremlin’s Dormition Cathedral, 15 year-old Mary watched as Nicholas crowned himself with the Great Imperial Crown of Russia, a magnificent piece of handiwork adorned with 4,936 diamonds that glistened in the grand cathedral like tiny pinpoints of starlight. But, unlike the tens of thousands who turned out to celebrate, young Mary wasn’t impressed.

Instead, something else had captivated her: the foundling asylum she had visited the previous day with her mother. There, she saw rows and rows of cribs full of rescued babies, some came from the streets of Moscow and others were left at the asylum door. She held them, stroking their pale faces, glimpsing in them the bitterness and blight of poverty and shame. Deep inside she felt a maternal ache to keep them safe. The feeling never left her.

As the years passed, her ambitions grew, and she longed to forge her own pathway and establish herself like the men in her family, but the turn of the 20^th century wanted little to do with women and their dreams: Women became wives then mothers. Mary would be no exception.

*All photos by Marvin Breckinridge