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Minor Private Hospital was founded in January 1906, and a two-story, brick hospital building constructed at 1420 Spring Street in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood. Most hospitals of the time had a religious affiliation, and the St. Anthony Association operated Minor Private Hospital. The hospital was named for one of Seattle’s leading philanthropists, Dr. Thomas T. Minor (1844-1889.)

Legislation passed by the Washington Legislature in 1909 required that nurses complete a course of study and be certified by a state licensing board. This led to a proliferation of so-called “Nightingale schools,” or nurse training programs. In September 1906, a school for nurses was established at Minor Hospital with a three-year course of training.

The Hospital provided the nursing students with the basic clinical and practical experience considered necessary. There was a minimum of formal classroom instruction. The hospital hired only supervisory nurses, so the student nurses provided the patient care and housekeeping. Probationers, as student nurses were called, worked eight to ten hours a day, seven days a week, and were expected to adhere to a strict code of conduct and obey physicians and supervisors without question. At the end of the program, students received a diploma and were eligible to work as a trained nurse, earning about five dollars a week in 1910.

The Minor Hospital nursing students originally resided in the main building, but as the hospital expanded a home was leased for them nearby at Boylston and Spring Streets, increasing the hospital capacity from 43 to 60 beds. Minor Private Hospital closed in 1928, and the last nursing school class graduated in 1930.

The nurses later organized the Minor Hospital Alumnae Association, and the Seattle group continued to meet into the 1950s, hosting events such as banquets and holiday parties. In 1948, the Association began compiling a memoir scrapbook for presentation to the Seattle Historical Society (now the Museum of History & Industry). Amateur photographer Enid Bell Ericksson, class of 1921, spearheaded the project and was responsible for the artistic design and organization of the alumnae class pages. She died unexpectedly in 1949, and Margaret E. Bateman, class of 1922, donated the scrapbook to the Historical Society in 1954.