Mercy Hospital

Jeffersonville

    On Thanksgiving day, 1897, the Sisters of Mercy opened their first hospital in Jeffersonville, on upper Chestnut street. It was located in a small six  room cottage at No. 623, East Chestnut, rented to them at fifteen dollars per month. Here under adverse conditions and with this poor and meager beginning was begun the institution which now crowns the hill at Twelfth and Missouri avenues.

    Sister Mary Regina, the Mother Superior, and one sister were the only ones to shoulder the necessarily hard work of the organization and start the hospital, but heir efforts were rewarded and in just one year and two weeks, on December 8, 1898, their new hospital building, at the corner of Twelfth and Missouri avenues, was occupied. This building is a substantial frame, formerly the residence of Mrs. Charles Rogers. 

    In less than three years, on September 30, 1901, the sisters had completed the sanitarium, a handsome brick building, located to the east of the hospital. The hospital is equipped for the care of the sick, medical and surgical cases; the sanitarium for the care of nervous and mental diseases. The latter building is a most substantial one, having all the inside walls of brick, with granitoid floors in basement, hard wood floors throughout the rest of the building, and heated with steam heat. This was erected wholly without outside aid and stands as a monument to the business sagacity of the Mother Superior. 

    At present this institution owns one whole city block between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets and Missouri avenue, an excellent site. It is owned by the Sisters of Mercy and is the headquarters of the sisterhood in the diocese of Indianapolis. Neither support nor direction is received form any outside authority, and it is self-supporting. The hospital at Columbus, Indiana, is a branch. 

    The plant is assessed at about forty-five thousand dollars, and with the growth of the city northward and the completion of extensive improvements and additions in the future Mercy Hospital bids fair to occupy a prominent place among the institutions of its kind in Southern Indiana. There are five sisters now ministering in the hospital and sanitarium. The former has a capacity of twelve, the latter of fifty. The institution is in a prosperous and substantial condition, and shows a healthy growth.

Source: Baird’s History of Clark County, Indiana by Capt. Lewis C. Baird, 1909.