Two brothers in Ambler saw an opportunity in the West Coast to help the community in Oregon with the best healthcare available for them.
History of Sellwood, Oregon
Sellwood, Oregon is located on the southeastern part of the city of Portland. During the 19th country, emigrants travelled west on the Oregon Trail where they established Donation Land Claims.
"The initial settlers engaged in the fruit nursery business, logging and general farming. Most trade and socializing was not with distant Portland, but with the City of Milwaukie, less than a mile south. Reliable transportation was by the steamboats which began serving river communities in the early 1850’s. The other route, a muddy track through the underbrush, was the Milwaukie Road."
- Eileen G. Fitzsimons, "Historic Sellwood"
One of the early settlers was Reverend John Sellwood who lived on a 321 acres donation land claim that overlooked the Willamette River. In 1882, T.A. Wood and William Ladd of the Sellwood Real Estate Company purchased his claim to develop the land that would later become Sellwood in the reverend's honor. Five years after the purchase, the town Sellwood was incorporated.
The Besson Family
During the early 1900s, Linford S. Besson, Sr. (1856-1909) arrived in Ambler, and worked as a merchant at a grocery store on Butler Pike. He raised his family at his home on Forest Avenue.
"The energies of Mr. Besson are devoted to handling choice staple and fancy groceries, cereals, canned goods and bottled delicacies, fruits, vegetables and fresh salt and smoked meats... Mr. Besson is a business man of much push, thoroughly conscientious, and his success is referred to with a sort of public-spirited pride as an instance of local enterprise."
- Ambler Gazette, August 20, 1903
After his death, his wife Emma and his namesake son Dr. Linford S. Besson, Jr. (1888-1948) took over his business. Linford attended public schools in Ambler and at the William Penn Charter School. He had to cut his studies at Lehigh University to run his father's grocery store, but eventually returned his studies at Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital of Philadelphia where he graduated in 1915 with a medical degree.
Fun Fact #1: As a student at William Penn Charter School, Linford, Jr.'s nickname was "Bess".
During that time, Linford's older brother Dr. John H. Besson (1883-1977) was working at the Sellwood Hospital in Oregon, and had been working with John at the hospital while studying at Hahnemann.
Dr. John J. Sellwood and the Sellwood General Hospital
The Sellwood Hospital was built in 1909 by Dr. John J. Sellwood (1866-1944) after he and his wife settled down in Sellwood. Oregon City native John J. Sellwood was the great nephew of Reverend John Sellwood whose interest in medicine and surgery motivated him to save up money to attend college. He graduated from Williamette University with a medical degree in 1887.
Right after graduation, he entered in the service of the Canadian Pacific Company as a physician and surgeon on the vessels where it travelled between Vancouver, British Colombia to Hong Kong. After gaining experience with the company, he left his position to work in Tokyo to take charge of a large hospital as a missionary physician.
Dr. Sellwood returned to the West and worked in multiple locations including Vancouver, Washington, and Los Angeles. In 1897, he moved to Sellwood where he built his hospital. It was considered one of the first surgical hospitals built on the east side of the Willamette River, and one of the leading hospitals to care for the sick and ill of the people of Portland.
"The Sellwood Hospital is a surgical and maternity hospital, and accepts no contagious or infectious cases. All such cases are taken care of in a building not directly connect with the hospital proper, thus making the hospital entirely safe from danger of such diseases. It has accommodation for twenty-five patients and has been built so as to admit of enlargement from time to time. It is equipped with all up-to-date instruments and appliances for surgical and maternity cases. The rooms are neatly, but as in all of the better class of hospitals, plainly furnished. Recognizing the effect of color upon persons or different temperaments, each of the rooms is of a different color and patients are at liberty to select according to their taste. The walls are delicately tinted, not papered, and cleanliness, which has been designated as ranking next to Godliness, is here also regarded as one of the highest of virtues."
- John Gaston, Portland, Oregon: Its History and Builders (1911)
Fun Fact #2: The hospital served with patients with injuries involving accidents in the neighborhood and work, and car wrecks. But during the 1919 Influenza Pandemic, one patient died at Sellwood Hospital from the flu.
In 1911, Dr. John H. Besson became the partner of Dr. Sellwood. He took over the hospital while Dr. Sellwood was overseas as as medical officer during World War I with his brother Dr. Linford S. Besson.
In 1925, the Besson brothers became owners of the Sellwood Hospital after Dr. Sellwood announced his retirement. The hospital was sold $100,000 to the brothers. Under their leadership, they planned to purchase new, modern equipment and standardize the hospital. They also planned to add a special department for handling cancer cases and a maternity ward.
Bibliography
"All Businesses Represented." Ambler Gazette. August 20, 1903. Page 2. https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/papd/islandora/object/papd%3Awivp-gazett_2910.
"Ambler Men In Oregon." Ambler Gazette. June 18, 1914. Page 7. https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/papd/islandora/object/papd%3Awivp-gazett_7006.
Beck, Dana. "The long and colorful story of Sellwood Hospital." TheBee. May 1, 2020. https://www.thebeenews.com/lifestyle/features/the-long-and-colorful-story-of-sellwood-hospital/article_d94c3896-5c72-5263-9e12-486179fb75a4.html.
Fitzsimons, Eileen G. "Historic Sellwood." SMILE (Sellwood-Moreland Improvement League). March 3, 2023. https://sellwood.org/history/.
Gaston, Joseph. Portland, Oregon: Its History and Builders in Connection with The Antecedent Explorations, Discovers and Movements of the pioneers that Selected the Site for the Great City of the Pacific, Volume 3. (Chicago-Portland, The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1911): 547-548.
"Google Maps Area Calculator Tool." DaftLogic. Accessed March 5, 2023. https://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-area-calculator-tool.htm.
"Local Man in Hospital Purchase." Ambler Gazette. March 26, 1925. Page 1. https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/papd/islandora/object/papd%3Awivp-gazett_14912.
Mueller, A. H. Atlas of the North Penn Section of Montgomery County, Pa., Plate 26, 1916.
The Record of the Class of 1908 of the William Penn Charter School. (Philadelphia: William Penn Charter School, 1908): 13. https://www.penncharter.com/uploaded/Yearbook_Archives/1900-1909/1908.pdf.
White, James T. The National Cyclopædia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders, Builders, and Defenders of the Republic, and of the Men and Women Who are Doing the Work and Moulding the Thought of the Present Time, Volume 37. (New York: J.T. White & Company, 1893): 274.
Wilson, Chris. "Sellwood Hospital." Old photos of architecture (blog), October 25, 2011. http://asitwasarchitecture.blogspot.com/2011/10/sellwood-hospital.html.
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