Ragland Clinic-Hospital
Gilmer, Upshur County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1933, the Ragland family opened the first full-time hospital in Upshur County. Thomas Scott Ragland, M.D. (1872 – 1936) came to Texas in 1895; he settled in Gilmer in 1902 with his wife, Mamie Helen (Denson). In addition to serving as the community physician, r\Ragland was a local surgeon for railroads, a businessman, and president of First National Bank. He worked together with his two sons, Madison Scott (1905 – 1986) and Hugh Mayo Ragland (1907 – 1966), who joined his practice after they finished their medical training. In 1933, the doctors purchased property on Cass Street and built a hospital and clinic to serve Gilmer and the surrounding areas. The Ragland Clinic-Hospital expanded several times. The first expansion (1935) included nine additional hospital rooms and beds. In the second (1946), the raglands added a new north wing with upstairs rooms, a dietary kitchen and a pharmacy. A 1953 expansion added more bedrooms and treatment facilities, and the final one (1957) increased in-room patient capacity and added a doctors’ office wing. Additional staff joined through the years, including Drs. J. Looney Fenlaw (1912 – 1992) and Tedroe J. Ford (1928 – 1980). The institution changed names to Ragland-Fenlaw Clinic-Hospital and then to Ragland-Fenlaw-Ford clinic and Gilmer Hospital to reflect the additional physicians. Besides directly serving patients, the institution created a successful licensed vocation nursing program to address the critical shortage of nurse retention during World War II. The institution continued to serve as the only general medical facility in Upshur County until it closed in 1981, when a new regional medical center opened.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1933 Dr. Thomas Scott Ragland and his physician sons opened Upshur County's first full-time hospital on Cass Street in Gilmer, serving as physicians, railroad surgeons, and civic leaders. The clinic-hospital expanded repeatedly across the following decades and, amid the nursing shortages of World War II, ran a licensed vocational nursing program to train and retain staff. Renamed as new doctors joined, it remained the county's only general medical facility until it closed in 1981.
Why it matters
The Ragland hospital shows how a single medical family could bring modern healthcare—and nurse training—to a rural Texas county for nearly half a century.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1933, the country was in the depths of the Great Depression, a moment when starting anything new took real nerve. That is exactly when a family of doctors chose to open the first full-time hospital Upshur County had ever had, on Cass Street in Gilmer.
Rural America was, in those years, badly underserved by modern medicine. Many counties had physicians but no proper hospital; serious illness or surgery meant a long, uncertain journey to a distant city. To bring a full-time hospital to a country county was to close some of that distance.
The man behind it had already lived the arc of a frontier-to-modern physician. Thomas Scott Ragland had come to Texas in 1895 and settled in Gilmer in 1902, and in the decades that followed he was not only the community's doctor but a surgeon for the railroads and a figure in local business — a reminder of how tightly a small-town doctor's life could be woven into the whole fabric of a place.
People & events
Dr. Thomas Scott Ragland (1872–1936) built more than a practice. Alongside doctoring he served as a local surgeon for the railroads — common work in an era when rail companies retained physicians along their lines — and he became a businessman and president of the First National Bank. His wife, Mamie Helen Denson, shared the Gilmer life he made after settling there in 1902.
His two sons carried the work forward. Madison Scott Ragland (1905–1986) and Hugh Mayo Ragland (1907–1966) both completed their medical training and joined their father, and in 1933 the doctors bought property on Cass Street and built the hospital and clinic that would serve Gilmer and the country around it for decades.
The place kept growing to meet the need. An expansion in 1935 added nine hospital rooms and beds; 1946 brought a new north wing with upstairs rooms, a dietary kitchen, and a pharmacy; 1953 and 1957 added still more beds, treatment space, and a doctors' office wing. As new physicians joined — among them Dr. J. Looney Fenlaw (1912–1992) and Dr. Tedroe J. Ford (1928–1980) — the institution's very name evolved, from Ragland Clinic-Hospital to Ragland-Fenlaw and then Ragland-Fenlaw-Ford, and on to Gilmer Hospital.
Its place in the American story
The Ragland story is a window onto how modern healthcare actually reached rural America — not through grand federal programs at first, but through individual families and doctors willing to build and rebuild in places the big hospitals overlooked.
Its nursing program speaks to a national moment. During World War II, with so many trained people pulled into the war effort, the country faced a severe shortage of nurses. In answer, the institution ran a licensed vocational nursing program to train and keep the staff a working hospital could not do without — a local response to a nationwide crisis.
And its long life, from 1933 until it closed in 1981 when a new regional medical center opened, traces the whole modern history of country medicine: a family-built hospital serving as a county's only general medical facility for nearly half a century, until the era of larger regional centers finally arrived to take up the work.
If you visit
This marker stands in Gilmer, the seat of Upshur County, and it asks you to imagine an institution rather than tour one. Read it slowly, because it packs almost fifty years of a county's health into a few lines.
As you stand near where the clinic-hospital served on Cass Street, think about what it meant for a rural county to finally have a full-time hospital of its own — a place to be born, to be treated, to have surgery close to home rather than a hard journey away.
Let the changing names on the marker sink in, too. Each one — Ragland, then Ragland-Fenlaw, then Ragland-Fenlaw-Ford, then Gilmer Hospital — marks another doctor arriving and another decade served. It is a quiet monument to the truth that a small town's medical care was built one physician, and one expansion, at a time.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Thomas Scott Ragland
- · Madison Scott Ragland
- · Hugh Mayo Ragland
Themes & tags
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