A drawing and floorplan of the type of military hospital quarters that were built in the 1780’s.
By Mary McTamaney
Entering the doors of Saint Luke’s Cornwall Hospital today, one sees an extensive medical facility where corridors stretch out in many directions and elevators wait to move people to multiple floors for treatment. Modern testing and treatment departments minister to out-patients, and upstairs (in the Newburgh campus) wards welcome admitted patients into over 240 beds. This greater Newburgh community can be proud that we have a hospital so prepared to care for us.
The history of Saint Luke’s/Cornwall traces back to 1874 and the kind hearts of the women of Saint George’s Parish led by pastor Reverend John Brown who responded to the need of local residents with no one to give them care for their infirmities. Together, they rented a cottage and began to take in patients. A local hospital network was born. Yet, those kind folks from St. George’s likely didn’t know that their growing hospital charity was not actually the first in the Newburgh area.
A far bigger hospital once spread out just south of the village of Newburgh in New Windsor in the 1780’s. It treated and housed the Revolutionary soldiers who were wounded or sickened in service to their fledgling country, and it grew to a bed capacity that far exceeded today’s local hospital wards. The beds were crowded together and uncomfortable. There was no privacy, no decent ventilation and very little in the way of pain relief. Trained nurses did not make regular rounds to check on patient needs. Yet, the troops of the Continental Army had sanctuary to rest and recover here in our community.
One of the first such treatment centers established in 1779 was in the Presbyterian Church at New Windsor. The congregation wanted their house of worship back and petitioned for a change. General Washington answered them in a letter that said: “It gives me pain at all times to put the inhabitants of any part of the country to an inconvenience, nor is it ever done but from necessity. In the present instance I can only say that if you can point out proper places for the accommodation of the sick, I shall be happy to find the Church at New Windsor appropriated to the use for which it was originally intended.”
Such proper places were found later that year and on through the war as hospital buildings were constructed along the byways of old New Windsor. They were far more coarse constructions than the lovely church that stood on a bluff looking out at the Hudson (beside the Old New Windsor Cemetery between today’s Route 9W and River Road). Yet they held many hundreds of troops recovering from battle wounds as well as accident injuries, frostbite and the many diseases that ravaged the countryside during a war that brought on much deprivation.
Recent research has revealed more about the great hospital complex that operated here during the War for Independence. On Saturday, May 6, that new history will be shared. From 2-3 p.m., historian Michael McGurty will present an illustrated talk about the area’s first hospital at the New Windsor Cantonment. Maps that he has discovered will give a good sense of how close the Revolutionary hospital complex was to the streets of today’s New Windsor. The program will be held rain or shine in the big Temple of Virtue Building, 374 Temple Hill Road, New Windsor. All are welcome.