10 Mar 2014

Lost Capitol Hill: How Lincoln Hospital Got Its Name

tnReaders of my book Urban Legends and Historic Lore of Washington D.C. will recognize the format of the following piece: Starting with a tale as printed (or told) elsewhere, I then go on and explain the real story behind the story as told. The chief difference this time is that I am also the source of the original tale. Yes, I got taken by a good story and did not due my due diligence before setting it down.

“Lincoln United States Army General Hospital was built in 1861 on a rubble strewn field one mile east of the Capitol. … Originally, the hospital was named ironically after the president, but soon thereafter, it was given this name officially.” -Robert Pohl and John R. Wennersten, Abraham Lincoln and the End of Slavery in the District of Columbia, 2009.

During the Civil War, Washington, D.C. was turned into an armed camp – and a hospital. Any large building, and, in fact, any empty land, was turned into a place for injured and sick soldiers to recuperate. Early hospitals were simple affairs, often quite small, or put into buildings that were not entirely appropriate for this use. Later, as greater demands were made on the facilities, and hard-won experience had taught the army how better to build them, larger and more appropriate hospitals were erected, and allowed the older and smaller buildings to be closed.

One of the first hospitals to be opened was a house belonging to Julianne Root Hobbie, the widow of Selah Reeve Hobbie, who had served both as a Representative and Postmaster General in his life. Their house, while still in the District of Columbia, was about a mile outside of the city limits of Washington, in what was then Washington County. The area eventually became built up and is today the Kalorama neighborhood.

Until March of 1862, Cliffbourne, as Hobbie’s estate was known, had been used by the 5th Cavalry Regiment, under Captain Wesley Merritt. After they were ordered out, James Shaw Billings was sent with a group of surgeons from Union Hospital in Georgetown to turn it into a hospital. This took considerable work, as he found it to be “in extremely filthy and dilapidated condition.” Billings cleaned up the area, and added tents and other structures for use by the patients.

1862 print of Cliffburne Hospital. (LOC)

1862 print of Cliffburne Hospital. (LOC)

In August, Dr. Henry Bryant was sent there to run the operation, and a few months later he was to move it again, this time to a newly built hospital east of the Capitol.

On December 27, the Washington Evening Star reported that Cliffburne (the ‘o’ was lost somewhere along the line; the final ‘e’ was forgotten frequently, as well) had only 100 patients, down from “about 250” the week before. The rest, it reported, had been moved to Lincoln Hospital “near the Capitol.” Lincoln Hospital, newer, larger, and built using the most modern methods, had opened just a few days earlier, on December 23rd.

It is thus clear that Lincoln Hospital was given the name by some unknown bureaucrat well before it opened, and not by its inmates.

Next week, we will look at where this story may have come from, as well as looking at other, similar, stories.


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