May 6 to 12 marks the celebration of National Nurses Week. In honor of all nurses, we present the history of the Bradford School of Nursing, which was an important part of Bradford Hospital for 59 years.

The Latin phrase “palma non sine pulvere,” or “No prize without a struggle,” was chosen by the Bradford Hospital School of Nursing graduating class of 1927 as their motto and was proudly inscribed in that year’s school yearbook, “The Gusher.”

The class of 1927 consisted of six women, Winifred Sherman, Leatha Hort, Mayfred Burroughs, Rhea Reilley, Blanche Bush and Josephine Hannon. But they were not the first, nor would they be the last, to earn their nursing caps at Bradford Hospital. When the program ended in 1956, more than 600 nurses had graduated and earned the privilege of wearing the school’s pin.

In the early days of Bradford, the nearest hospital was in Buffalo or Pittsburgh but as the city grew, the community and industry needed a general medical center for the sick and injured. A movement to build a hospital began in April 1881, and was finally incorporated in July 1885. Two years later, Bradford’s first hospital, a renovated farmhouse painted gray and made of wood on Bennett Brook Road, opened for patients on May 10, 1887.

A call for women to train as nurses went out the next July. It said “nursing as a profession, to be prepared for by a course of training and to be prosecuted with intelligence and skill, is affording a wide field of opportunity for women, work for which their capacities peculiarly fit them and in which they gain esteem and gratitude as well as remuneration.”

But it was 10 years before Rufus Barrett Stone, a local attorney, petitioned the hospital board of directors to amend the hospital’s charter, allowing for an accredited training school for nurses. In January 1897 that amendment was granted by the Court of Common Pleas of McKean County.

The new training school boasted that it was the earliest of its kind in the state of Pennsylvania and that it was the only accredited nursing school between Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Scranton. The initial length of the course was two years although it soon was expanded to four. Its official name was the Bradford Hospital Training School and it existed for 59 years.

The first graduating class was unusual, however. Eight women were already employed as nurses at Bradford Hospital (earning approximately $10 a month, or $375 in today’s money) but had no formal degree. Six of them chose to attend the new school of nursing and graduated in October 1897, having only 10 months, not two years, of official education. They were the first graduates of the Bradford Hospital Nurses Training School.

Admission to the school was simple, provided the young woman passed the physical tests. Vaccinations against common contagious diseases such as diphtheria, scarlet fever and typhoid fever were given to the freshmen class. Applicants had to be between the ages of 18 and 35 and unmarried, and students must remain unmarried during the time they attended school. Each had to be a high school graduate, preferably in the top third of her class, and each had to pass a personal interview.

The freshman year was devoted to theoretical and practical instruction in the nursing care of the sick. The class schedule was arranged on an eight-hour day comprising classroom work, one hour of supervised ward work and study periods. Classes covered anatomy, chemistry, nutrition and cooking, the history of nursing, microbiology, massage and other basic skills.

The next term, the student was assigned to various departments in the hospital, given lectures and clinical instruction, and the opportunity to observe patients and practice various nursing procedures.

Classes included those on diseases, orthopedics, operating room techniques, pathology, sociology, tuberculosis, case study and ward practice. The second year, students learned gynecology, obstetrics, pediatrics, communicable diseases, dermatology and more ward practice. The third year was a continuation in all of the above, and included three-month stints in Pittsburgh at Children’s Hospital for pediatrics and at Warren State Hospital for experience in psychiatry.

Upon satisfactory completion of all class work, the student was “pinned” and received her nursing cap.

Originally, nursing students were housed in the old hospital itself but in 1914, following a commencement speech by the director of the hospital in which he noted that the number of pupils in the nursing school might be increased if only housing were provided for them, Mrs. Sarah Hamsher, a local leader in philanthropic and civic enterprises, took it to heart. Her husband, Lewis Hamsher, had died in 1907 and in his memory, she offered to build and equip a home for nursing students. That building, known as the Hamsher House, was built on the site of the first hospital.

Designed by E.N. Unruh, a prominent and popular Bradford architect, it was built of fireproof construction, had 34 private rooms, a suite and a living room. It opened in 1917. In 1924, an extension was built (also funded by Sarah Hamsher), adding nine more private rooms and a living room.

In 1949 the former Neilly home at 110 N. Bennett St. was purchased and converted into 16 rooms to provide additional living quarters for student nurses.

In 1926, graduates of the Bradford Hospital Training School published a yearbook and called it “The Gusher.” Funds received from publishing the book went toward the education and entertainment of the student nurses. In 1926, a piano and bench for the Hamsher House and a bookcase for the classroom was purchased. In 1927, graduates purchased a radio, radio table, and a chime clock. A successful year in 1928 saw a floor installed in the basement of the Hamsher House for dancing and other entertainment. And each year, $25 was given to the next class, toward the yearbook fund.

The name of the yearbook was changed to “Aesculapian” (in reference to the art of healing) following the erection of the new aluminum hospital in 1950.

By the mid-1950s, however, serious concerns began to arise as to the financial ability of the hospital to continue to fund its nursing school. A committee studied the advisability of discontinuing the school and “investigated the present day need for a school compared to the present-day cost and trend of costs in providing such training.”

They advised that continuing to fund the school would “impose an unjustified cost burden on the hospital and the community.” In 1954, the net loss to operate the school cost the hospital $69,000 or $795,000 in 2024 dollars.

There were other reasons as well. It was found that nursing schools were increasingly affiliated with colleges or universities, not individual hospitals. It was found that graduates of the Bradford School of Nursing were not remaining at Bradford Hospital, but were relocating to other medical facilities. Of the 84 women who graduated from 1948 to 1953, only 10 were still Bradford Hospital employees. And it was found that many Bradford girls, wishing to be trained as nurses, were furthering their education in larger cities, such as Buffalo, Rochester or Erie.

After careful consideration, during its regular meeting in February 1955, the Bradford Hospital Board of Directors voted unanimously to close the school.

The last class to graduate from the Bradford School of Nursing – 22 women – took place on June 15, 1956.