 The Women's Legacy Project of Snohomish
County, Washington seeks to honor our foremothers by recording and
sharing their personal histories, their ability to adapt to the forces
of change and their constant vigilance as stewards of the
diverse cultures of our society.www.snohomishwomenslegacy.org WLP Story Number 37 ~ |
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ELECTA ROSSMAN FRIDAY by Sandy Schumacher ‘Electa Friday will ever be linked with the story of this community’s progress’ stated the Illustrated History of Skagit and Snohomish Counties’, yet considering the impact she had on the medical community of this county, her name could certainly be referenced as the ‘missing link’. Electa Friday spent her life serving the community by opening the first training school for nurses, and later opened and managed the new Everett Hospital built in 1904. Hers is definitely a name to be remembered in any study of the medical establishment of Snohomish County. |
 Electra Friday on the right with nurses in the hospital. Courtesy of the Everett Public Library Northwest Room |
 Electa Friday, Courtesy of the Everett Public Library Northwest Room |
After finishing her education at Hahnemann Medical
College in Chicago in 1878, Electa Rossman returned
home to Hartford Wisconsin where she resumed life in
the upper Midwest approximately thirty miles
northwest of Milwaukee. Her father and uncle had
settled in Hartford Wisconsin prior to statehood and
started the Rossman’s Saw Mill along the scenic
Rubicon River in the 1840’s. Electa’s parents were
both born in New York State, but like many
easterners of the 1840s, moved to settle the upper
Midwest as it was crossing from Territorial into
Statehood status It may have been her mother’s story about her own relocation that encouraged Electa to move west, or it may be that after her marriage the northwest held the same promises to her and her husband as the Wisconsin Territory did for her parents forty-five years earlier. She married Henry Friday in Hartford Wisconsin in 1884, a young man reared on a farm in Hartford. After they were married he went to work for the railroad, which ultimately brought him to the west coast on business and over time the opportunities of pioneering in the northwest were apparent. When the Fridays arrived in Everett in 1893, he began a lifelong career buying and selling real estate. Coming to Everett seemed appropriate since two Friday brothers and their families had settled on the peninsula as early as 1890 and were a part of the city’s initial development. |
Prior to
the arrival of Mrs. Friday, the Articles of Incorporation of
the new Everett Hospital stipulated that the eight men who
were named as Trustees would elect twenty-five women to
manage the running of the hospital. Construction began in
August of 1893 in the 3300 block of Broadway and the first
patient admitted in January 1894. In 1897 Electa Friday was
appointed Superintendent and General Manager also known as
the ‘matron’ of Everett Hospital and it was not long before
she began the first training school for nurses. She served
the community in this position until 1900 when she
resigned. In 1904, while the Board of Trustees was
deliberating on the poor financial status of the hospital,
Mrs. Friday presented them with a proposal to develop a
private hospital in the 3500 block of Hoyt Avenue, which was
accepted and the existing hospital was sold. Mrs. Friday
returned and resumed management of the Everett Hospital for
four months pending the construction of her new hospital in
the 3500 block of Hoyt Avenue.
On
October 6, 1904 The Everett Herald announced that the recent
opening reception of the new Everett Hospital had been
declared the ‘social success of the week’. Mrs. Friday
proudly received guests in the reception hall surrounded by
palms, while nurses conducted tours of the new facility.
The new Everett Hospital contained a general hospital with maternity ward and a school of nursing as well as an area to treat special cases. Mrs. Friday took on the additional responsibility of Deputy Sheriff which was necessary by ‘reason of her caring for certain classes of patients at the hospital’, so states the writer of the Illustrated History of Skagit and Snohomish Counties, 1906, [pp 914-15.]
 The first Everett Hospital on Broadway, 1902. Courtesy of the Everett Public Library Northwest Room |
Electa Rossman Friday died at age sixty on April 21, 1916 having forever left her mark on the hospital business and education of nurses in Snohomish County. Her obituary refers to her as a ‘pioneer resident and well-known Nurse’, an overly simplistic description of a woman whose life in the service of others made a significant impact here and improved the operation of the Everett Hospital. It was she who changed the hospital management style from a twenty-five person management team that lacked both leadership and financial training to a hospital model that was structured and run as a business. She was praised in her obituary as the person who ‘developed the institution to its present high standing’ while living a life that others could aspire to. But her life’s story lay there, waiting to be rediscovered and shared. A link no longer missing, but found, valued and placed in its rightful home among the great leaders in Human Services during the development of Snohomish County. |