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By Tim Ruzek

At age 77, Barbara Dovenberg had walked 112.5 miles in nearly one month around Austin during summer 1923.

This tracking started in June after Dovenberg was gifted a mechanical pedometer for her birthday. Back then, pedometers worked like a pendulum clock with parts moving while walking.

After a full year with the pedometer worn around her neck, Dovenberg, the “Ministering Angel,” had walked 2,720 miles for her visits to sick or distressed residents. That’s 300 miles more than the distance between New York City and Los Angeles.

Dovenberg’s records showed for that year she made 1,776 home visits and delivered 1,540 floral bouquets to the sick. This topped her 1922 statistics of 877 sick calls and 635 bouquets, which mostly came from local greenhouses and gardens at no charge but, when needed, Dovenberg bought them.

“It is not probable that in the entire country can be found a man or woman whose days are spent in going about doing good in the manner that Mrs. Dovenberg does the work,” the Austin Daily Herald wrote Jan. 2, 1924. “It makes no difference what the nationality, creed, color or position in life, all who are ill look alike to her.”

In 1905, Dovenberg became a regular sight walking to homes. Friends marveled at her endurance with “this work of love” that started from serving on local service lodges’ sick committees.

Around 1920, Dovenberg started bringing flowers to the homes of everyone in town who was sick, not just lodge members.

“For years, Mrs. Dovenberg, apparently impervious to the insidious advances of Father Time, has visited Austin’s sick and afflicted,” the Herald wrote July 18, 1923. “For years, she has brought joy to the hearts of the shut-ins with her cheery smile and bouquet of flowers. ‘Sick calls’ are her hobby.”

Dovenberg districted the city so everyone she knew was ill would get a bouquet during the week. She believed “cheer is good medicine in a sickroom.”

In 1923, an American woman’s average life expectancy was 58; men were 56. Dovenberg advised walking “five miles at some time every day, and that’s all there is to it.”

Dovenberg made house calls all year, “plowing through snowdrifts in the winter and braving the torrid rays of the sun in the summer.” She even walked five miles on Christmas Day 1922 to visit shut-ins and braved 10-below temps one New Year’s Day to call on five residents.

A Herald reporter joined Dovenberg in July 1923 as she “stepped briskly up Mill Street (3rd St NE)” on a hot day from her home where Accentra Credit Union is today. She stopped to pat a boy’s head.

“She knew him by name as she does hundreds of Austin people.”

The reporter asked Dovenberg why she didn’t drive.

“Me, buy a car? Why I should say not,” Dovenberg said. “I am young yet, and I can walk; besides I would have to make so many stops to talk to my friends that it would be worn out.”

Born in Germany in 1846, Dovenberg came to the United States (Ohio) with her parents at age 2. In 1863, she married Andrew Dovenberg. They lived in Indiana, Illinois and Iowa.

In 1882, they moved to Preston, Minn., where Andrew died. Dovenberg moved their nine children to Austin, where she stayed except for two years.

“She was a good mother, and for years, her whole interest was in her home,” the Herald wrote.

Dovenberg ran the Harrington Hotel at the corner of East Water and Railway (4th Avenue and 10th Street Northeast) in a home-like manner, creating a large patronage.

In 1904, she became active with Central Presbyterian Church next to George A. Hormel’s home. His brother, the Rev. Henry Hormel, preached there in German.

She was a “tireless worker” for Women’s Relief Corps, helping veterans and serving as a “Patriotic Instructor.”

“On Decoration Day, she was always at work and did not quit until every honor she could pay the old veterans was paid.”

In spring 1925, Dovenberg became seriously ill. She died June 18, 1925.

The Herald described Dovenberg’s life as “one of struggles in her earlier years and one devoted to the relief of those who suffered in her later life.” Her visits were “one of the daily sights of our city.”

“No greater tribute can be paid to her than that contained in the five words, ‘She went about doing good,’” the Herald wrote.

Dovenberg’s funeral at the Presbyterian Church postponed a celebration of Austin’s newly decorated library. Every church seat was filled long before her service, including by six Civil War veterans in front.

It was “one of the largest and most impressive held in Austin for some time,” the Herald wrote. “It served as a living testimony to the high esteem in which she was held by the people of all denominations in the community who came to pay their last respects.”

Later that summer, Dovenberg’s family – eight surviving children, 22 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren – dedicated a memorial urn with her name attached to the church lawn. The urn represented Dovenberg’s “love for flowers, which she distributed among the sick on her many visits to those who were shut in.”