Asbury Methodist Hospital and Rebecca Deaconess Hospital, Minneapolis

Incorporated on August 14, 1891, Rebecca M. Harrison Deaconess Home emerged during the late nineteenth century Christian deaconess movement, which encouraged young women to live in religious community to train for and carry out humanitarian work, particularly associated with the body, among the “worthy” poor in urban areas.  In Minneapolis, the Methodists, under Sarah Harrison Knight, the Lutherans, under Elizabeth Fedde, and the Episcopalians under Sister Annette Relf, sponsored deaconess work.  The Rebecca M, Harrison Home established by Knight and named after her mother,  revived an earlier, struggling Methodist deaconess effort in the city (Bakeman). The Rebecca Home leaders described their work as “We minister to the poor, visit the sick, pray with the dying, care for the orphan, seek the wandering, comfort the sorrowing, and save the sinning” (Statement of the Asbury Methodist Hospital and Rebecca Deaconess Home 6).

The Asbury Methodist Hospital and Rebecca Harrison Deaconess Home occupied a building at the corner of 9^th Ave. South and 6^th St. that previously housed the Free Dispensary, established in 1878 by C.A. Pillsbury, George A. Brackett, Charles M. Loring, A.B. Barton and E. S. Jones, “for the relief of the deserving poor, who were in physical distress but not subjects of hospital care” (Shutter 198) and had occupied the building since it was erected in 1888.  The Methodists acquired the building in 1892 and later that year opened the Deaconess Home on August 14 and the hospital on August 31 Statement of the Asbury Methodist Hospital and Rebecca Deaconess Home, 8). 

Superintendent Knight’s 1893 report noted that in its first year, the hospital served 385 patients, comprising “eighteen different nationalities, representing twelve distinct creeds and were engaged in sixty-three diverse occupations” (Statement of the Asbury Methodist Hospital and Rebecca Deaconess Home 10).