Alameda - Cheaney folks of a certain age often start our
visit, "I was born in the Blackwell Hospital in Gorman."
Like most good things in Eastland County, the Blackwell Hospital
can trace its ancestry to the Mansker Lake Community.
I vaguely remember driving by there as a child, but the visual
is fuzzy. Both my parents were born there, one going home to Cheaney,
the other to Blanket, between Comanche and Brownwood. The Blackwell
Hospital was said to be "the" hospital in this part
of Texas. An empty city lot, its grass knee high to a new historical
marker, is all that remains of the building from which so many
began their lives.
The text from the historical marker reads: "Much of Eastland
County's medical history can be traced to the work of two brothers,
George and Edward Blackwell. George (1882-1955) attended Baylor
Medical College and Northwestern University Medical School in
Chicago, where Edward (1890-1956) also attended. Both men returned
to Eastland County after receiving their degrees.
"In 1907, George wed Frankie Brogdon, and in 1913, Edward
wed her sister, Bessie. The two young physicians served in the
U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War I. Following the war,
the brothers opened the Blackwell Clinic in downtown Gorman. They
soon realized the need for patient care facilities, and in 1919
they built Blackwell Sanitarium, later known as Blackwell Hospital,
at this site. Frankie and Bessie prepared meals at the new facility,
which utilized its own livestock as a source of meat, eggs, milk
and butter. Nurses performed medical service, as well as housekeeping
tasks, and the brothers treated patients at both the clinic and
the hospital.
"Contemporary to the hospital's opening, two large oilfields
began drawing scores of new residents to the area, and the hospital
continued to grow to meet demand. The brothers, who eventually
moved their clinic to the hospital facilities, began to specialize
and add new physicians to the staff. These included Dr. David
V. Rodgers (1910-1971), George Blackwell's son-in-law who joined
the staff in 1938 and assumed hospital leadership in the late
1950s. In 1971, hospital administrators completed a larger building
elsewhere (WHERE?). Having grown to become a four-story brick
edifice, with doctor and dental offices, clinic and laboratory,
the old Blackwell Hospital building remained vacant until its
demolition in 1989."
So, how can Alameda take credit for the Blackwell Hospital? Dr.
Ed and Dr. George were both born and raised in the "Mansco
Lake Community" to Edward F. and "Rantie" Jane
Motley Blackwell (both buried at Alameda). Their father, Edward
F., moved to Ranger in the early 1870s from Chicago, on the advice
of his doctor (he had tuberculosis, so a drier climate was recommended).
The tiny settlement of Ranger must have been a shock to Ed's system,
after having come from the bustling commercial city of Chicago.
Their mother Rantie's family fled to Texas from Georgia. They
say Rantie never got over being forced out of her Georgia home
by Sherman's Union Army of destruction (a trauma shared by more
than a few of the area's earlier settlers. She referred to Abe
Lincoln as "that old buzzard" into her twilight of her
life.
Her husband Ed worked as a county surveyor here until some "good
Southerner" needed his job. Ed's coming from Illinois (read:
Yankee) costs him his job. He bought 375 acres above the cliff,
just west of the Leon River in Alameda in 1884 (his brother Jim
ended up across this Alameda - Eastland Road a few years later,
marrying Julia Jones, also born in Georgia). {Jim and Edward F's
kids (except Dr. George, who attended Cheaney) are said to have
attended Triumph School two miles to the west…. I wonder
why…both Cheaney and Triumph were farther from their house
than Alameda, just down the hill from both houses}.
Edward and Rancie's two sons, Ed and George, left those Mansker
Lake roots to become doctors, though they served the Alameda -
Cheaney Community til the end of their careers. George taught
for one year at School Hill (probably knew the Elrods). He went
to medical school in Dallas, then Northwestern University of Medicine
in Chicago. After graduation, he returned to Eastland County's
Romney Community, where he married Frankie Lee Brogdon in 1908.
Their only daughter, Buryl was born there in 1912 (she later taught
at Alameda).
George's brother Edward attended "country schools" then
Hankins College in Gorman. He later joined his brother George
in Chicago where Ed worked his way through medical school (one
job was as a street car conductor).
After received medical degree, he came home to Texas. Still being
too young to take the State Medical Board exam, he went to Romney
working in George's drug store. Ed moved to Gorman in 1915 and
went into medical practice with George.
The early oil boom and a major flu epidemic greatly increased
demand for medical services. The first Blackwell hospital opened
in 1919, boasting a kitchen, bathroom, and eight patient rooms.
The hospital reached full capacity before all the furniture arrived.
Makeshift cots were borrowed and patients were put out in the
hallway. In 1921, eight more rooms were added. Regular office
calls were $2. Eyeglasses cost $12.50. Tonsillectomies were $35.
Dr. Rush, Dr. Brandon and Dr. Stubblefield were also there, in
practice with the Blackwells at one time or another. Blackwell
Hospital gradually enlarged until it had four stories and fifty-two
rooms, seven MDs, a dentist and lab technician.
Dr. George's daughter Buryl married David Verle Rodgers in 1932,
who was also a teacher at Alameda (brother to Shafner Rodgers,
also an Alameda teacher).
His father-in-law, Dr. George, talked him into entering Baylor
Medical School in Dallas. He graduated in 1937. Dr. Rodgers began
practice in July 1938 at the hospital. He became a partner and
later the owner. Dr. Rodgers continued the hospital's traditions,
treating sickness, slowing epidemics, curing disorders, and conducting
surgery. Dr. Rodgers made house calls late into his career, enduring
him to hundreds of residents.
The doctors accepted almost anything as payment during the depression/WWII
era. One child's tonsillectomy was paid for with homemade apple
jelly. By 1969, Dr. Rodgers had delivered 8,850 babies, approximately
eight times the population of Gorman.
Compiled from stories written by Buryl Blackwell Rodgers, Marilyn
Harrison Currie and Maurice E. Currie, all in the red "Gateway
to the West" Eastland County History.
Jeff Clark - [email protected]