Maternity Hospital (later, Ripley Memorial Hospital), Minneapolis

The hospital was founded by Martha George Rogers Ripley, a pioneer doctor and social reformer, who was born in Lowell, VT in 1843. The family later moved to Iowa where Martha met and married William Warren Ripley. The couple moved to Massachusetts where she became active in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and enrolled in Boston University’s School of Medicine.  She and her family then moved to Minneapolis where she continued to be active in the Suffrage Movement and joined Plymouth Congregational Church. The accomplishment for which she is best known is the establishment of a Maternity Hospital for unwed mothers in 1886.  A small house was rented at 315 15^th St. S, but it quickly became apparent that larger quarters were needed and the hospital was moved to  2529 4^th Ave. S.  One year later, Dr. Ripley formed a corporation to provide “a lying-in hospital for the confinement of married women who are without means…and girls who have been led astray.”  In 1896, the hospital purchased a house on a five-acre tract at the corner of Penn and Glenwood (then Western) Avenues North.  One requirement of patients was that they attend a religious service on Sunday and often on Thursday as well.  A nursery was added in 1909 and an infant’s home for abandoned babies and a residence for unwed mothers in 1910 and 1911 respectively.  The hospital also functioned as an informal adoption agency placing infants in “good Christian temperance” homes.  Dr. Ripley died in 1913, and four years later a new hospital on the site was dedicated and its name changed to Ripley Memorial Hospital.   The hospital closed in 1957.