The home in the foreground of this postcard belonged to inventor and firearms designer Daniel Baird Wesson of Springfield, Massachusetts. With Horace Smith, Mr. Wesson formed both the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and Smith & Wesson firearms manufacturing companies.
The house at 132 High Street, Springfield, was donated by Mr. Wesson in 1906, in memory of his late wife, to become the Hampden Homeopathic Hospital. It became Wesson Memorial Hospital later that year when Wesson himself passed on. It was a 30-bed facility, but Wesson Hospital enlarged with a further endowment from his estate to build a new 100-bed unit at 140 High Street, as well as a new 25-bed maternity hospital in 1908.
The old Wesson home that served as the original Wesson Memorial Hospital no longer stands, and what became Wesson Women's eventually merged with Springfield Hospital and became Baystate Medical Center.
The penny-postcard was published by George S. Graves of Springfield, Mass.
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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts - A Northern Factory Town's Perspective on the Civil War; Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts; States of Mind: New England; as well as books on classic films and several novels. Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.
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