Nursing Education

Correspondence, reports, printed materials, pictures, financial data, biographical data, and miscellaneous items relating to the beginning and progression of the Department of Nursing at Hampton Institute. Includes information regarding Dixie Hospital which was first opened in 1891 on the campus of Hampton Institute. Miss Alice M. Bacon convinced General Samuel Chapman Armstrong that it was a duty of the school to offer nursing and medical care to the aged and ex-slaves in the area. With his consent, she organized a fund raising campaign for a nurse training school and hospital. A building was donated on the campus, and students converted the building into a ten-bed, two ward hospital. When the building was dedicated, Miss Bacon named the hospital; "Dixie", after her favorite riding mount. In 1892, the State of Virginia granted a charter to the Hampton Training School for Nurses, Incorporated which authorized it to "establish, maintain, and conduct a hospital for the sick and afflicted". It is important to note that it was the trainingschool for nurses that was charted by the State of Virginia, and that the training school had the authority to establish a hospital as a subsidiary. The first Dixie Hospital was located near the old live oak ( the Emancipation Oak ) that stands today on the Hampton Institute campus. The second Dixie Hospital was located on Soldiers Home Road. Four buildings were provided on this location of which one building was the nurses home, built by General Armstrong in memory to his mother. While at this location, 4,300 patients received care and 138 nurses graduated. The third Dixie Hospital was opened on East Queen Street at a cost of over $70,000. It is recorded that the equipment in this hospital was equal to equipment in any hospital in the state. The land, purchased for $20,000, was the home of President Tyler and was known as the Eureka Tract. Hampton Institute held a deed of trust for $12,000 on the land until the mid-1940s, when it was paid off by the hospital. In the late 1930s Hampton Institute disassociated itself with the Hampton Training School for Nurses, but continued to cooperated in the teaching of the necessary chemistry, biology, food and nutrition courses,and other subjects that the hospital could not teach due to limited facilities. The name of the training school was changedto Dixie Hospital Nurses Training School. Dixie Hospital outgrew the East Queen Street location, and in 1959, the fourth Dixie Hospital was opened on Victoria Boulevard in Hampton, Virginia. Its name was later changed to Hampton General Hospital.