Wheeling Hospital

Wheeling Hospital. Treating Union and Confederate Soldiers. , You are standing at the site of Wheeling Hospital during the Civil War. Local doctors and the Catholic Bishop Richard V. Whelen founded the hospital on March 12, 1850, 11 years before the war began. At first, the hospital was located in a building near the Visitation Nuns convent and then was moved several times. In April 1853, the Sisters of St. Joseph arrived as nurses and also assumed the care of orphans. Three years later, the hospital move from Fifteenth Street to the former Michael Sweeney mansion here in North Wheeling., In the spring of 1864, with the bloodletting of the Wilderness and other battles, the U.S. Army needed more beds for the wounded. In April 1864, Wheeling Hospital was designated a "post hospital" with acting surgeon Dr. John Kirker in charge. A local physician, Dr. John Frissell, served as assistant surgeon. Forty-seven military patients in the Athenaeum prison had already been transferred here, and then, on July 6, two hundred wounded soldiers arrived unexpectedly. The sisters gave up their beds, and the orphans were moved to a house on Wheeling Island. Many of the wounded were housed in tents outside the mansion. Six of the sisters were enrolled as U.S. Army nurses under Mother de Chantal Keating. Union and Confederate wounded lay side-by-side and received equal treatment. Wheeling Hospital was designated a U.S. Army General Hospital from November 1864 through June 1865.