Nancy Murdock recently wrote to tell me she grew up in a house at 47 Elm St. in Cooperstown. She was told the house was originally a hospital built after the Civil War for wounded soldiers returning from the war, and wondered if the stories were true.
Indeed they are, but it was a few years following the war and operated for only seven years.
No matter what war a veteran or their families have been through, one thing in common with each is that there are many thanks when a war is over. That was the thinking behind many Cooperstown area residents at the end of the Civil War. In widely felt gratitude, Cooperstown’s first hospital —The Thanksgiving Hospital — opened in June of 1868.
Miss Susan Fenimore Cooper, the daughter of the famous novelist James, was a key player in establishing the new facility. She was primarily behind the fund raising, contribution drives, collections in churches and other benefits to make the health care center a reality. A building was purchased on the south side of Elm Street, between Eagle and Susquehanna Streets, and remodeled for $3,500 into a hospital according to a plan suggested by Doctor Horace Lathrop.
Doctor Lathrop and Doctor W.T. Bassett, the father of Mary Imogene Bassett, were primary doctors and surgeons. Bassett was the senior physician of Cooperstown. The hospital continued to operate until 1875. A national depression gripped the nation at the time, which decimated donations, forcing the hospital to close until the mid-1890s. The old property was sold. But Miss Cooper never gave up in those years between. Despite closing, she wanted to re-establish a small cottage hospital bearing the old name. In 1889, she worked to establish an endowment fund of $25,000. A majority of it ($18,000) was covered by Alfred Corning Clark and the remainder by generous gifts in the community, well surpassing the $25,000.
The funding enabled the board of managers at Thanksgiving Hospital to adopt new building plans in October 1893. Mr. Erastus Beadle, a real estate entrepreneur, offered a three-acre site at the foot of Irish Hill in the village. The cornerstone was laid in May 1894. The new building finally opened October 1, 1896 with 15 beds, increasing to 25 by 1907. The hospital continued to grow, receiving its first X-ray machine in 1900 through a public subscription drive. A new ambulance was presented in July 1904. In 1907, a second two-story building was added, called the Brooks Building, intended for use by the nurses. In 1911, another building, owned by Mrs. Florence Sill, was moved onto the grounds, just west of the Brooks Building. This served as a delivery room, pathology study area, and mortuary space.
Statistically speaking, between 1868-1922, Thanksgiving Hospital admitted 8,697 patients, providing 107,256 patient days. It attended to 809 births, and 399 deaths.
Thanksgiving Hospital served its mission well, until it was succeeded by Bassett Hospital in 1922. The new hospital took on Thanksgiving patients until the death of Mary Imogene Bassett in January 1925, closing it temporarily until 1927. Thanksgiving Hospital re-opened to fill in that gap of time.
The Thanksgiving Hospital was re-incarnated as a home for the elderly under the operation of the Walling Home for Aged People, found at the corner of Main Street and Walling Avenue in Oneonta. Eventually, the residents and staff were moved to the former Thanksgiving Hospital. The Oneonta mansion was about to become a temporary site of the new Hartwick College, until the original building on Oyaron Hill opened in 1929.
The Cooperstown-based Walling Home changed the name to the Clara Welch Thanksgiving Home in August 1928, named after a highly regarded Cooperstown resident, Clara Bootman Welch. She had served with the Red Cross during World War I, and was well respected in religious, social, and business affairs in the community.
In 1928, residents paid an entrance fee of $1,000 or “property in that amount” to live there the rest of their lives. Funeral costs were also covered by the lump-sum payment. The residency-for-life arrangements ended in 1986.
The Thanksgiving home was destroyed by fire in March 2003, but was totally rebuilt to resemble the old home, and residents were welcomed back in April 2004.
Oneonta City Historian Mark Simonson’s column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area before 1950. His Wednesday columns address local history 1950 and later. If you have feedback or ideas about the column, write to him at The Daily Star, or email him at simmark@stny.rr.com. His website is oneontanyhistorian.com. His columns can be found at www.thedailystar.com/opinion/columns/.