09/10/2026
Before hospitals were the default and long before most modern Central Florida maternity wards existed, women like Mary Jane "Naynee" Johnson were the ones families trusted with the most vulnerable moments of their lives.
Born in 1904 to sharecropping parents in rural Georgia, Naynee left school after the third grade to work the fields alongside her six siblings. But her mother and grandmother -- both respected lay midwives -- recognized something in her early on: what the family called "healing hands." By the time she was fifteen, she was already assisting births in her community, trained in the generations-old traditions of midwifery.
In the 1930s, the Johnson family moved to Central Florida during the Great Depression, and from then until the early 1980s, Naynee served families across Orange, Seminole, and surrounding counties as a midwife and birthworker. By 1973, she was one of only fifty remaining "granny midwives" left in the state of Florida-- a living thread connecting Central Florida to a much older tradition of community-based maternal care.
Now, a project called Naynee's Babies is trying to reconnect with the families she helped bring into the world. They're searching for anyone born in the greater Orlando area between 1933 and 1983 who may have been delivered by Mary Jane Johnson, or mothers who stayed at her birthing center between 1945 and 1980.
If that's you, or someone in your family -- they'd love to hear from you. Visit nayneesbabies.org to learn more and share what you know.
Photo courtesy of nayneesbabies.org
