Jarvis U.S. General Hospital | |
---|---|
Geography | |
Location | Grounds of Maryland Square, Baltimore, Maryland, United States |
Organization | |
Care system | Union Army |
Type | Specialist |
Services | |
Emergency department | Yes |
Beds | 1500 |
Speciality | Care of wounded soldiers during the American Civil War |
History | |
Opened | 1862 |
Closed | 1865 |
Links | |
Lists | Hospitals in Maryland |
Jarvis U.S. General Hospital was a military hospital founded in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1861, at the beginning of the American Civil War, for the care of wounded Federal soldiers. The hospital was built on the grounds of Maryland Square, the former residence of the Steuart family, which had been confiscated by the Federal government at the outbreak of war. [1] The hospital closed at the end of the war.
Although Maryland was a slave state, she remained in the Union during the Civil War. However, many Marylanders were sympathetic to the Confederacy, including the Steuart family of Baltimore, who were planters and slave owners along the Chesapeake Bay. On April 16, 1861 Brigadier General George H. Steuart (1828–1903), then a captain in the US Army, resigned his commission, left Maryland and joined the Confederacy. [2] His father, Major General George H. Steuart (1790–1867), did the same, though he was by then considered too old for active service. [3] As a consequence of these actions, the family home at Maryland Square, on the Western outskirts of Baltimore, was confiscated by the US government.
In February 1862 a Massachusetts soldier described the property (by then known as "Camp Andrew", after Massachusetts Governor John Andrew):
On May 25, 1862 the property was taken into the control of the medical director of the US Army, with the former Steuart mansion serving as the main administration building for the hospital. [5]
The hospital, which had a capacity of 1,500 beds, was built on relatively high ground, which at the time was on the edge of the city of Baltimore, and, according to one contemporary writer, benefited from "a salubrious air". [1] It was named in memory of surgeon N. S. Jarvis, of the US Army, who died while medical director of the Middle Department. [6]
In April 1864, Lt. Col. DeWitt Clinton Peters, Assistant Surgeon in charge at Jarvis Hospital, received a number of prisoners recently released from the Confederate Prisoner of War camp at Belle Isle, Virginia. He described the "great majority" of the patients as being:
According to Surgeon General Joseph K Barnes, Union hospitals treated over a million patients during the course of the war, suffering a mortality rate of 8%. [1]
Jarvis hospital was closed in 1865, at the war's end. In 1866, on May 15 and June 6, the buildings of Jarvis hospital were auctioned off, permitting successful bidders 10 days from the date of auction in which to remove their purchases from the grounds. [5]
General Steuart's house was restored to him after the war, but he never lived there again, choosing to live at Mount Steuart, his family estate on the Chesapeake in Anne Arundel County. When he visited Baltimore, Steuart would stay instead at the Carrollton hotel. [8]
In 1867, the building was re-named Steuart Hall, and leased to the Reverend Newman Hank as a school for "young gentlemen", one of whom later recalled that, though the "long corridors, many closets and corners in unexpected places" made a fine place to explore and play, few dared enter after dark. The boys feared "the groaning of the dying, and when the stairs creaked, we knew why - they were bearing out the dead". [8]
In 1872 what was left of the land was sold off in lots as part of a development known as "Chesapeake Heights". [8] In 1882 the property was acquired by the Sisters of Bon Secours for use as a convent and in 1884 the mansion was demolished. [9]
General Steuart died in 1903, and little trace of his mansion, or Jarvis Hospital, remains today. However, in 1919 the Sisters of Bon Secours themselves opened a hospital, their first in the United States, at 2000 West Baltimore Street, on the site of the former Jarvis Hospital. [10] The Bon Secours Hospital continues to flourish today, and forms an important part of the modern neighbourhood, which still retains the name of Steuart Hill. [8]
The Baltimore riot of 1861 was a civil conflict on Friday, April 19, 1861, on Pratt Street, in Baltimore, Maryland. It occurred between antiwar "Copperhead" Democrats and other Southern/Confederate sympathizers on one side, and on the other, members of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania state militia regiments en route to the national capital at Washington who had been called up for federal service. The fighting began at the President Street Station, spreading throughout President Street and subsequently to Howard Street, where it ended at the Camden Street Station. The riot produced the first deaths of Union volunteers by hostile action, although caused by civilians, in the American Civil War. Civilians among the attackers also were killed.
Spring Grove Hospital Center, formerly known as Spring Grove State Hospital, is a psychiatric hospital located in the Baltimore, Maryland, suburb of Catonsville.
George Hume Steuart was a planter in Maryland and an American military officer; he served thirteen years in the United States Army before resigning his commission at the start of the American Civil War. He joined the Confederacy and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Army of Northern Virginia. Nicknamed "Maryland" to avoid verbal confusion with Virginia cavalryman J.E.B. Stuart, Steuart unsuccessfully promoted the secession of Maryland before and during the conflict. He began the war as a captain of the 1st Maryland Infantry, CSA, and was promoted to colonel after the First Battle of Manassas.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), Maryland, a slave state, was one of the border states, straddling the South and North. Despite some popular support for the cause of the Confederate States of America, Maryland did not secede during the Civil War. Governor Thomas H. Hicks, despite his early sympathies for the South, helped prevent the state from seceding.
The Maryland Army National Guard is the United States Army component of the U.S. state of Maryland. It is headquartered at the old Fifth Regiment Armory at the intersection of North Howard Street, 29th Division Street, near Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard in Baltimore and has additional units assigned and quartered at several regional armories, bases/camps and other facilities across the state.
Provident Hospital began as a 10-bed clinic in a private residence at 419 Orchard St, in northwest Baltimore, Maryland in 1894 to provide both medical treatment and training for Black nurses and doctors. The hospital was founded by Negro physicians who were practicing in the Baltimore area just a year after the founding of the first Black-owned and operated hospital, Provident Hospital of Chicago. Within two years it moved to a larger site at 413 W. Biddle Street. Provident Hospital was one of the first black medical facilities located in Baltimore.
George Hume Steuart, (1700–1784) was a Scottish physician, tobacco planter, and Loyalist politician in colonial Maryland. Born in Perthshire, Steuart emigrated to Maryland in around 1721, where he benefited from proprietarial patronage and was appointed to a number of colonial offices, eventually becoming a wealthy landowner with estates in both Maryland and Scotland, and serving two terms as mayor of Annapolis. However, he was forced by the outbreak of the American Revolution to decide whether to remain loyal to the Crown or to throw in his lot with the American rebels. In 1775 Steuart sailed to Scotland, deciding at age 75 that "he could not turn rebel in his old age". He remained there until his death in 1784.
Richard Sprigg Steuart (1797–1876) was a Maryland physician and an early pioneer of the treatment of mental illness. In 1838 he inherited four contiguous farms, totalling approximately 1900 acres as well as 150 slaves.
George Hume Steuart (1790–1867) was a United States general who fought during the War of 1812, and later joined the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. His military career began in 1814 when, as a captain, he raised a company of Maryland volunteers, leading them at both the Battle of Bladensberg and the Battle of North Point, where he was wounded. After the war he rose to become major general and commander-in-chief of the First Light Division, Maryland Militia.
Benedict Swingate Calvert was a planter, politician and a Loyalist in Maryland during the American Revolution. He was the son of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, the third Proprietor Governor of Maryland (1699–1751). His mother's identity is not known, though one source speculates that she was Melusina von der Schulenburg, Countess of Walsingham. As he was illegitimate, he was not able to inherit his father's title or estates, which passed instead to his half brother Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore (1731–1771). Benedict Calvert spent most of his life as a politician, judge and planter in Maryland, though Frederick, by contrast, never visited the colony. Calvert became wealthy through proprietarial patronage and became an important colonial official, but he would lose his offices and his political power, though not his land and wealth, during the American Revolution.
The Washington Blues were a company of Maryland Volunteers which saw action during the Battle of Bladensburg and the Battle of North Point, during the War of 1812.
"Maryland Square", later known as "Steuart Hall", was a mansion owned by the Steuart family from 1795 to 1861, located on the western outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland, at the present-day junction of West Baltimore and Monroe streets. In the first year of the American Civil War, the property was confiscated by the United States Federal Government as its owner, George H. Steuart, a former United States Army officer, had resigned his commission to fight in the Confederate Army, in the Army of Northern Virginia as a brigadier general.
The Maryland Line in the Army of the Confederate States of America was made up of volunteers from Maryland who, despite their home state remaining in the Union, fought for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Of approximately 25,000 Marylanders who volunteered, most fought in the Army of Northern Virginia, and it was not until late in 1863 that a Maryland Line in the CSA was formally created. However, by this late stage in the war, few men wished to leave the units they had fought alongside for more than two years, and the exiles' dream of an independent Maryland Line in the Confederate army would never be fully realized.
The Steuart family of Maryland was a prominent political family in the early history of Maryland. The Steuarts, of Scottish descent, have their origins in Perthshire, Scotland. The family grew wealthy in the early 18th century under the patronage of the Calvert family, proprietors of the colony of Maryland, but their wealth and status was much reduced during the American Revolution, and the American Civil War.
Grace Medical Center, formerly known as Bon Secours Hospital, is a hospital in Baltimore. The hospital is part of LifeBridge Health, a nonprofit healthcare corporation that was formed in 1998 and currently operates several medical institutions in and around Baltimore, Maryland.
Like other border states, Maryland found herself in a difficult position at the start of the American Civil War, with loyalties divided between North and South. Although Maryland herself remained in the Union, Maryland militia units fought on both sides of the Civil War. Many militia members travelled south at the start of the war, crossing the Potomac River to join the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.
Slavery in Maryland lasted over 200 years, from its beginnings in 1642 when the first Africans were brought as slaves to St. Mary's City, to its end after the Civil War. While Maryland developed similarly to neighboring Virginia, slavery declined in Maryland as an institution earlier, and it had the largest free black population by 1860 of any state. The early settlements and population centers of the province tended to cluster around the rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland planters cultivated tobacco as the chief commodity crop, as the market for cash crops was strong in Europe. Tobacco was labor-intensive in both cultivation and processing, and planters struggled to manage workers as tobacco prices declined in the late 17th century, even as farms became larger and more efficient. At first, indentured servants from England supplied much of the necessary labor but, as England's economy improved, fewer came to the colonies. Maryland colonists turned to importing indentured and enslaved Africans to satisfy the labor demand.
William Steuart was a stone mason in colonial Maryland, and Mayor of Baltimore from 1831 to 1832. He was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army during the War of 1812, and saw service during the Battle of Baltimore, where he commanded the 38th United States Infantry foot regiment.
The First Light Division of Maryland Volunteers was a militia unit based in Baltimore and formed in around 1841. Its commander was the militia general George H. Steuart. Elements of the division participated in the suppression of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859, but its members found themselves in a difficult position at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Many of the citizen volunteers, especially the senior command, wished to secede from the Union and join the Confederate States of America. However, Maryland remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War and as a consequence of this the division was disbanded. Many of its members left Maryland and went south to fight for the Confederacy.
Bon Secours is a not-for-profit Marriottsville, Maryland-based Catholic health system founded in 1983 that owns, manages, or joint ventures 19 acute care hospitals, one psychiatric hospital, five nursing care facilities, four assisted living facilities and 14 home care and hospice programs in seven US states.