Chimborazo Hospital

Image by taberandrew via Flickr

In my list of soldiers enlisting with W. T. Jefferson on June 29, 1861, was a John Bates that died at Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond.  I was a little curious about the name.  I found in several links on the computer that this is now the location for the Richmond Battlefield Park in Richmond, Virginia.  I read that recruits that came to Richmond at the beginning of the war set up training quarters at this location.  Chimborazo Hill was named by Alexander Humboldt an explorer.  Mr Humboldt had traveled to Equator and explored an inactive volcano called  Mt. Chimborazo, hence Richmond's Mt. Chimborazo was named.  The Soldiers set up as many as 100 wooden  buildings there and when they went to war they left their wooden barracks behind.  So the Surgeon General of the Confederate States Dr. Samuel P. Moore commandeered the area for a hospital which was established in October of 1861.  Dr. James B. McCraw was the head of the hospital.



http://www.mdgorman.com/Hospitals/chimborazo_hospital.htm
http://www.nps.gov/rich/historyculture/chimborazo.htm