Jefferson General Hospital Laundry and Engih [sic] House

The building was situated on the river bank east of Jeffersonville.The first military occupation at Jeffersonville, Indiana during the Civil War was in 1862 when two area regiments established a camp on a farm owned by Blanton Duncan. Lovell Rousseau, the organizer of the regiments, christened the camp “Camp Joe Holt.” The name was retained when it ceased to be a camp and became a hospital, called “Joe Holt Hospital.” Jefferson General Hospital, built to replace the one at Camp Joe Holt, opened 21 February 1864 and closed in December 1866. Located near Jeffersonville on land obtained from U.S. Senator Jesse D. Bright, the acreage reached down to the Ohio River, facilitating patient transfer from riverboats to the hospital. The health facility had 24 wards each radiating out like spokes on a wheel and all connected by a corridor one-half mile in circumference. Each ward was 150 feet long and 22 feet wide, and could accommodate 60 patients. Female nurses and matrons were quartered separately from the men. The third largest hospital in the country and a showpiece for the Union army, Jefferson General reputedly was one of the finest in the United States for the care of wounded and sick servicemen. During the almost three years that the hospital was in existence the institution cared for more than 16,000 patients and served more than 2,500,000 meals. First person accounts of life at the Jefferson General Hospital can be found in two separate diaries at the Indiana Historical Society Library. One is the published book, Hospital Pencillings by Elvira J. Powers. A volunteer and employee at the hospital, she wrote of the conditions at the hospital and her experiences there. The second is the collection SC2742, Louis C. Webber’s Diary, 1864–1866, a soldier who was wounded three times and was a patient there for a while