Dr. Riley Andrew Ransom

Ransom was born in Kentucky in 1886 and graduated as valedictorian of Louisville National Medical College in 1908. He opened the Booker T. Washington Sanitarium in Gainesville in 1914, when he was one of only sixteen Black doctors in Texas, and moved it to Fort Worth in 1918 with a nurses' training school. It was the first twenty-bed facility for African Americans in Texas and one of three Black-owned hospitals accredited by the American Medical Association. He renamed it Ethel Ransom Memorial Hospital in 1938 for his late wife. It closed in 1949, and he died in 1951.

What the plaque says

Dr. Riley Andrew Ransom A native of Kentucky, Riley Andrew Ransom studied medicine at Louisville National Medical College. Upon coming to Gainesville, Texas, during the early 1900s, he opened the Booker T. Washington Sanitarium. In 1918 Dr. Ransom moved the hospital to Fort Worth, where he served as Chief Surgeon until the facility closed in 1949. He is remembered for his community leadership and for his significant contributions to the development of health care in Fort Worth. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — 3.3 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 3.6 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 5.4 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 5.8 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.

More markers nearby

• Mount Olivet Cemetery — 1.1 mi
• Amon Carter Riverside High School and Riverside ISD — 1.1 mi
• Pioneer Birdville Schools — 2.2 mi
• West Fork Baptist Association — 2.2 mi