Midwife To Generations- Millie Gildersleeve 1858 – Feb. 16, 1950

Millie Gildersleeve, a freed slave from Georgia, may have been the first permanent black resident of what is now Palm Beach County. She was midwife to many of its pioneers.
Millie came to the “Lake Worth region” in 1876 with the Dimick family. She married M.J. “Jake” Gildersleeve (1857-1931) on the lawn of Cap Dimick’s Palm Beach home, and in 1890, Dimick deeded her waterfront property for her home in what is now Riviera Beach.
Around 1886, she became a midwife to Richard Potter, the area’s first doctor. When it was time for a pioneer baby to be born, Richard Potter would sail up to Millie’s wharf, toot his whistle, and Millie would scurry out with her instruments.
Millie raised five children of her own and later worked for Russell Hopkins, grandfather of current West Palm Beach lawyer Randolph Hopkins. She died of cancer at 92 in February 1950. Many of her descendants – and the descendants of the babies she delivered – still live in West Palm Beach.
- ELIOT KLEINBERG