Asheville Health Care Center history

Not long after the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) denomination was founded in 1863, Mrs.

The United States Census gives the total population of Buncombe County as only 18,422 in 1880, comprised of 14,935 “White”, 3,476 “Colored” and 11 “Indians”. In the Asheville township area at that time, there were 5,568 permanent residents and 2,616 in Asheville town proper.

Mission Hospital would officially care for its first patient, a woman in labor, on October 17, 1885 and grow under the leadership of women for the next 63 years.

Seeing these mountain communities as an investment in a unique region and population of the nation, beginning in 1893, Presbyterian Home Missions established sixteen schools throughout Madison County.

Presbrey, Frank, “The Land of the Sky and Beyond,” New York: Fleming, Schiller, & Carnick Press, 1895, n.p., booklet, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C.

In 1899, Vanderbilt built and endowed a ten-bed hospital dispensary for his villagers and named it after a recently deceased cousin, Clarence Barker.

Despite the relatively small number of Catholics residing in Buncombe County in 1900, the Asheville community welcomed the Sisters, which is unusual considering this point in social history and the dominance of Protestantism.

The Circle Terrace Hospital, established in 1912, was the first TB hospital for blacks in the country.

Sarah Judson, in her article “Civil Rights and Civic Health: African American Women’s Public Health Work in Early Twentieth-Century Atlanta”, tells about Booker T. Washington’s efforts beginning in 1915 to establish a National Negro Health Week.

By 1917, Dunnwyche faced potential bankruptcy and was only saved from imminent closure by the decision to admit a tubercular man, and then more men after that.

The Sanitarium soon outgrew the original two rooms dedicated to health work and by 1918 added six more permanent rooms, using tents in warm weather when there were more patients in need.

She came to Mountain Sanitarium in 1919 after graduating from the Hinsdale Sanitarium in Chicago, IL , staying there for her entire career.

By 1920, numerous sanatoria were operating in and around Buncombe County.

In 1921, Sanitarium nurses and health workers extended their program of health and healing into the city of Asheville.

[101] “Formal Opening of Colored Hospital: Institution will Open Its Doors Next Thursday—Public Support is Asked.” Asheville Citizen Times, September 24, 1922, 32.

In its first five years, by June 1, 1927, 1,801 patients were treated.

The Sanitarium opened a nursing school in 1929, accepting students from the local area as well as SDA students from across the country that wanted to train as nurses in a remote rural area of the country to prepare for careers as medical missionaries around the globe.

Unfortunately, due to inadequate funding, the Presbyterian Church ended its sponsorship of White Rock Hospital in 1932, and the hospital closed its doors.

As better treatments for TB were developed and fewer sufferers required long term hospitalization, St Joseph’s became a general hospital in 1938.

The large brick structure at 185 Biltmore Ave. was used to house the Asheville Colored Hospital starting in 1943.

Sanitarium is Noted Health Resort.” Asheville-Citizen Times, February 1, 1959, n.p., found in the clippings file of Pack Library, Asheville, NC.

Blackwell, C. “A place of service to mountain people” Asheville Citizen Times, June 22, 1969, found in the clippings file of Pack Library, Asheville, NC.

More recently, the Mountain Area Health Education Center developed a family practice residency, established at Mission Hospital in 1974, which has assisted in the development of a new generation of physician training and has contributed a significant number of physicians to the area.

No story of hospital-medical care in Henderson County would be complete without special mention of the long service of Miss Leila V. Patterson who was head nurse and director of nursing service for many, many years and who died in 1975.

Asheville, NC: Mission Hospital, 1985, 19.

The Heritage of Old Buncombe County North Carolina, Volume II. Winston-Salem, NC: The Old Buncombe County Genealogical Society in cooperation with The History Division of Hunter Publishing Company, 1987, 48.

Transformation of Appalachia.” NWSA Journal, Vol 11, Number 3 (Fall), 1999, 83.

Christopher Sprenger and Michael DeLoach founded SanStone in 2004, taking their notable careers in long-term care and branching out to establish a new standard of care in North Carolina.

Online video. http://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/century-caring- video (accessed September 22, 2012).

Sources for this article included “The History of Medicine in Asheville” by Freeman Irby Stephens, M.D. (Grateful Steps, 2013); Wikipedia; “sanitariums” article at www.DigitalHeritage.org.