Photo by Mary Anne McDonald
Emma Dupree
Fountain’s Herbalist & Healer
My friend and colleague Karen Baldwin knew Emma Dupree better than I. Much of Karen’s life’s work in eastern North Carolina is archived in the Karen Baldwin Folklore Collection at ECU. She produced the first academic documentation on Emma and was instrumental in getting her presented the Brown-Hudson Award from the North Carolina Folklore Society in 1984. Dupree also received the North Carolina Heritage Award in 1992.
Decades before such terms as eco therapy, holistic healing, and nature therapy were in vogue, Emma Dupree championed the healing properties of plants using their roots, stems, and flowers and celebrating in her way daily what became nationally known, in 1969, as Earth Day.
Living in Fountain, I’ve collected details and anecdotes on her life and enjoyed trying to keep her name and legacy alive, primarily through the Emma Dupree Day that was first held at Fountain Presbyterian Church in 2017. I created the Wikipedia entry on Dupree, using mostly Karen Baldwin’s book, Folk Arts and Folklife in and around Pitt County: A Handbook and Resource Guide, which was published by the Folklore Archives at East Carolina University in 1990, and I presented a talk on her at the ECU med school’s Laupus Library that you can watch. The Herbal Academy has an excellent entry on her, using a few more of the beautiful photos taken by Mary Anne McDonald, who received the 2003 Brown-Hudson Award for preserving, researching, and disseminating North Carolina’s folk culture.
Emma Dupree’s headstone, St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church, Falkland, NC. RAFoto.
But I’m no physician nor folklorist, except by avocation. Others, such as Jim Kirkland and Holly Matthews at ECU have done the field work to help place Emma Dupree’s life and work into larger contexts. But the best source is the terrific documentary made by Dr. Walter Shepherd and ECU medical students in 1978, Little Medicine Thing. Much of it is spent following Mrs. Dupree around her yard in Fountain, three blocks from where I live today, as she explains to students what she’s pulling from the ground. Watch it.
Emma Dupree was born on July 4, 1897 in Falkland, where she spent the first third of her life, before moving to Fountain. She died March 12, 1996 and is buried at St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church on NC 222 in Falkland.
Just a block west from what was once Emma Dupree’s personal herb garden in her Fountain yard, at the corner of Jefferson and Mills Streets, we dedicated, on April 16, 2022, a historical marker commemorating her renown, which is also celebrated annually during Fountain’s Emma Dupree Day, on April’s first Saturday.
Photo by Mary Anne McDonald.
a partial list of herbs used by Emma Dupree:
sage
double tansy
Emmarabbit tobacco
sweet flag [wetland]
pokeweed
jimson weed
white mint
mullein
maypop [passion flower]
catnip
horseradish
sassafras
silkweed
“healing berry tree”
–Alex Albright
April 2025
Photo by Mary Anne McDonald.
Aunt Emma at home in Fountain. Courtesy of Veronica Newton.
The outdoors photos above by Mary Anne McDonald were taken for for NC Folklife/ NC Arts; Aunt Emma on her porch was loaned to me by her niece, Veronica Newton, who wasn’t sure of the photographer’s identity.