‘In the years to come, when some historian seeks to portray the life and works of the University of Minnesota, he will in all probability set down the year 1918–19 as the most unusual period in all the early history of this institution. As a matter of fact, the University as such ceased to function and in its place was established a military camp.’
– Marion LeRoy Burton in his ‘President's Report for the Year 1918-1919
The United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917. Ten days later, Minnesota Governor Joseph A. A. Burnquist signed a law creating the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety. In passing that law, the legislature essentially handed control of the state over to a group of seven men, five of whom had not been selected by popular vote. Led by the Governor and State Attorney General, this commission wielded unprecedented power in the state until January of 1920, two months after the war’s end.
Designed to help Minnesota contribute to the war effort, the commission controlled the price of goods and helped conserve fuel. However, it also used its unchecked power to conduct secret surveillance of the state’s citizens and intimidate any organization or group it felt might prove disloyal, including farm groups, labor organizations, and citizens of German descent, Minnesota’s largest ethnic group at the time.
Marion Leroy Burton from 1925 Gopher.
Student Army Training Corps drilling in front of Armory in 1918 (courtesy of University of Minnesota Archives).
Concurrently, the University of Minnesota was similarly swamped by a wave of patriotism and fervent war support that, as its President Burton pointed out, effectively turned the university into a military training camp. In early 1918, the US War Department created the Student Army Training Corps (SATC) program in which students enlisted to train for the military while attending classes. Partly driven by the 1917 Selective Service Act, which in September of 1918 was extended to men as young as 18, over six thousand men came to the University of Minnesota to join the SATC. These students held the army rank and privileges of private and were required to participate in a strict military schedule of training interspersed with classes. Since SATC students were required to live on campus, the University of Minnesota closed all its fraternity houses and converted them into barracks.
Some training camps began that summer, but most SATC students were expected on October 1, 1918, when SATC college units were authorized to formally organize. Still not ready, the university delayed its fall opening until October 9th for SATC students with civilian students delayed until later. However, all planning was thrown into chaos when incoming SATC students brought the 1918 influenza pandemic to the university.
SATC section page from 1920 Gopher.
Industrial Exposition Building and 1918 Student Army Training Corps mess hall.
So many SATC students came to the university that many students were housed at the Industrial Exposition Building by Saint Anthony Falls. SATC students slept on tightly spaced cots and the close living quarters made it easy for influenza to spread.
Military Training at the ‘U’
Although the SATC brought it to the institution’s forefront, military training at the University of Minnesota dated back to the institution’s post-Civil War rebirth. Military training was not part of the university’s 1867 Preparatory Department but after the university expanded its programs and staff in 1869, military training occurred at 10:25 a.m., Monday through Thursday. Major General Richard Woodhouse Johnson taught military science and tactics, often assisted by Edward Henry Twining. Twining, another Civil War veteran, taught chemistry, natural sciences, including the university’s first geology courses.
Military training at the university was not tied to faculty nostalgia about their Civil War activities but was a requirement mandated by the Morrill Land Grant Act that was the underpinning of the university’s funding. Without its program of student military drill, the early University of Minnesota would not have survived.
Company Q from the 1890 Gopher with Gratia Countryman second from right.
In 1888, the University of Minnesota Cadet Corps was established. Although initially intended as a male institution, university women demanded to join, and women’s units were soon created. One of the first women officers was Gratia Countryman, who would later run the Minneapolis Library system, becoming the first woman in the United States to run an urban city library system.
In 1889, military drill became compulsory for all students, although a few years later the requirement for women was dropped. From 1910 through 1916, the Cadet Corps trained every summer at Fort Snelling. The program was disbanded in 1916 when the National Defense Act established the Reserve Officer Training Corps. However, male students in their first year and second year were still required to drill until 1934.
The scale of the SATC program was unprecedented. During its short reign, it dominated campus life. SATC students in the naval and marine units were stationed in Pillsbury Hall with mess furnished at the Union (now called 216 Pillsbury). This led to a series of unusual lost and found entries like the following from the Official Daily Bulletin on November 1, 1918:
Missing. — A Krag-Jorgenson Rifle, 1898 type. If located, please return to the U. S. Naval Unit, Pillsbury Hall.
Nov. 1, 1918, Daily Bulletin - Lost & Found notice (courtesy of UMN Archives).
Psi Chi house at 1515 University Avenue SE
University Health Service
As part of the university’s planning for its military role, the University Health Service was created in 1918 in tandem with the SATC. Since SATC students and programs already occupied all available campus space, the University Health Service was housed in the Psi Chi Fraternity house at 1515 University Drive SE on the Minneapolis Campus and in two dorms on the Saint Paul Campus. At its start, it was largely a one-person operation, run by its director, Dr. John Sundwall. Originally envisioned to be geared towards health examinations of incoming SATC students, when the influenza epidemic arrived, the University Health Service had to transform itself on the fly.
‘During the last weeks of September influenza struck Minnesota with an almost explosive violence. I shall never forget the first victim at the University, a handsome, robust, young second lieutenant. In less than a week his body was sent home.’
John Sundwall, director of the University Health Service in 1918.
(photo courtesy of UMN Archives)
Within weeks, there were 2,000 cases of influenza at the university, 1,200 among the SATC students and 800 among the civilian students. Sundwall reported that twelve deaths occurred among the former and 8 deaths among the latter but was pleased that death rate was decidedly lower than at other institutions. Still, the volume of cases overwhelmed the university facilities and initially many of the SATC sick were transferred to Fort Snelling. However, the same week the university opened, a horrific forest fire burnt a trail of carnage across northern Minnesota, killing nearly 500, displacing thousands, and even threatening the city of Duluth. Between the war, fire, and influenza epidemic, Minnesota’s supply of health care workers was stretched dangerously thin, and the University Health Services was on its own.
Quickly realizing a fraternity house clinic was woefully underequipped to manage the deluge of ill students, the University Health Services took over the lower floor of Pillsbury Hall. The Pillsbury clinic opened on February 1, 1919, becoming home for University Health Services for a decade.
University Health Services in the lower level of Pillsbury Hall - from 1920 Gopher (courtesy UMN Archives).
‘The University Health Service was first installed temporarily in a house at 1515 University Avenue, since all buildings on the campus were being used to their utmost capacity during the S.A.T.C. period and it was impossible to obtain quarters on the campus. On February I, 1919, it was moved to the first floor of Pillsbury Hall, its present quarters. One end of the floor has been prepared with a view of taking care of dispensary patients. One hundred students can readily be taken care of daily in the Dispensary. The other end of the floor has been converted into a hospital including wards and private rooms for isolation purposes. Twenty-five beds and other essential hospital equipment suitable for the care of twenty-five bed patients have been provided.’
– John Sundwall’s report on the University Health Service in ‘The President's Report for the Year 1918-1919’
In its first year, University Health Services rendered SATC and civilian students a total of 32,051 services. Their Pillsbury headquarters even had an operating room.
Blueprint of Pillsbury Hall Lower Level in 1919 (courtesy of Rebecca Toov of the University of Minnesota Archives)
Link to a larger format image of the 1919 Pillsbury Hall blueprints.
‘The Health Service is housed on the first floor of Pillsbury Hall where students may go day or night for individual treatment. A students' hospital which accommodates twenty-five patients is maintained. All these services are entirely free, every student being required to pay a health fee of $2 each quarter. The aims of the Health Service are constructive. They relate specifically to the academic efficiency of the student and the University.’
– ‘The President's Report for the Year 1918-1919’
University Health Services in the lower level of Pillsbury from 1924 Gopher.
Legacy
The fall of 1918 also saw the arrival of a young University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate who came to Minnesota to pursue medical studies. They volunteered to help at the University Health Services but almost immediately became a patient themselves. They recovered at the 1515 University Ave. clinic rather than Fort Snelling because they were not only civilian but female.
Ruth Evelyn Boynton was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin on January 3, 1896. She was inspired to become a doctor through the example of her family’s physician, Dr. Mary Piper Houck, who attended Boynton’s mother and two brothers during their final illnesses. Boynton would spend most of her career at the University of Minnesota, becoming the first woman in the United States to lead a co-educational health services program.
Recovering from influenza, Boynton joined University Health Services on October 1, 1918, as a part time Student Assistant in Physiology with a salary of $75 for the remainder of the year. Boynton was fortunate in her rapid recovery and continued health. The November 2, 1918, University of Minnesota Official Daily Bulletin memorialized three university health care professionals who died from influenza or associated pneumonia within three weeks of Boynton’s appointment.
Ruth Evelyn Boynton in 1920 Gopher.
Boynton and Alpha Epsilon Iota in the 1920 Gopher (courtesy UMN Archives).
Boynton followed University Health Services into their new Pillsbury Hall facilities and eased the difficulty of balancing classes and physician duties by boarding next door to Pillsbury in the Elizabeth Northrop Cottage at 113 Church Street SE. During her time as a Minnesota graduate student, Boynton demonstrated the energy and drive that characterized her later career. Besides classes and work, Boynton played leading roles in Alpha Epsilon Iota (a medical sorority), the Medic Six O’clock Club (for medical students) and was one of four students who organized her class’s midyear commencement exercises.
On the morning of December 15, 1921, Boynton graduated as a Doctor of Medicine. That same day Sundwall’s successor, Dr. Harold Sheely Diehl, hired her as one of the Student Health Services first two full-time employees.
While World War I ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the influenza epidemic did not follow the same schedule. The December 5, 1918 issue of The Minnesota Daily proclaimed that ‘Influenza Has Run Its Course,’ but the epidemic returned in successive waves. For the next three years in Pillsbury Hall, working as Diehl’s assistant physician, Boynton not only dealt with a second wave of influenza, but outbreaks of scarlet fever, paratyphoid fever, and tuberculosis. The latter would become a focus of Boynton’s future research.
In 1923, Boynton left the University to become Director of the Minnesota Department of Health’s Division of Child Hygiene for four years. She then spent a year at the University of Chicago as their Chief Medical Advisor for Women and assistant professor of medicine. However, in 1929, Boynton returned to the University of Minnesota and remained there for the rest of her career.
The Minnesota Daily - December 5, 1918.
William Sheely Diehl in 1926 (courtesy of UMN Archives).
When Diehl left University Health Services to become dean of medical science, he recommended Boynton for the job of Director. He acknowledged in his letter to the regents that they might be hesitant to appoint a woman for the position, but he felt Boynton could handle the job and urged them to give her a one-year ‘acting director’ appointment to prove her worth. In 1936, Boynton became the first and, for many years, the only woman director of a co-educational health service in the country.
Boynton would remain the Director of the Student Health Service until her retirement in 1961. Under her leadership, the University of Minnesota’s Student Health Service became one of the most renowned university health services in the nation, expanding beyond simple physical examinations and treatment into disease prevention, health management, and comprehensive mental health counseling services. During World War II, Boynton also ran the University of Minnesota School of Public Health when its director left to serve in the Army. In recognition of her service and accomplishments, the University of Minnesota renamed the Student Health Service to Boynton Health Service in 1975.
Ruth Boynton (center) in 1940 (courtesy of UMN Archives).
Pillsbury Hall Origins
After a decade in Pillsbury Hall, University Health Services left the building for new facilities in a wing of University Hospitals. The following year, it expanded its services to cover full-time faculty and other university employees.
The lower level of Pillsbury Hall was the first long-term home of what is now known as Boynton Health Service and launched Boynton’s career, but those were not the only programs incubated within the building’s stone walls.
Although the department of Geology and Winchell’s Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota began in Old Main, Pillsbury Hall was where both achieved national recognition. It was also in the upper level of Pillsbury Hall that the departments of Zoology and Botany had their start. Subsequently, all the departments derived from those two programs also trace their origins to Pillsbury Hall. Which included the Bell Museum, whose predecessor first separated from the General Museum in Pillsbury Hall. In addition, the School of Mines began on the middle and lower floors of Pillsbury along with its subsequent programs.
Despite originally being called Science Hall, Pillsbury Hall's legacy is not restricted to the sciences. Its lower level was also the birthplace of both the university’s School of Design and its Department of Music. The School of Design was located in the east wing of the lower level in the 1890s. The Department of Music was officially organized in 1902. Their quarters were a single room in Pillsbury’s lower level, but I have not found yet discovered which room. Eventually though, the botany program on Pillsbury’s upper level complained of the excessive noise and Music was forced to move from Pillsbury Hall into unheated quarters above the Gopher confectionery store in Wilson’s Hall. Hence, many of the University’s art, design, and performance programs also trace their origins back to Pillsbury Hall.
It was the 1918 Influenza pandemic though, that interwove 1920s Pillsbury Hall with Ruth Boyton’s career and University Health Services.