From the St. Louis Republic, 12/24/1901, p. 4, c. 6

OLD WAR-TIME HOSPITAL IS NOW AN AGED NEGRO’S HOME.
Confederate Buildings at Richmond, Erected Hurriedly to Serve as a Haven for Wounded Soldiers, Was Taken Possession of After the Struggle Was Over, and One Remains, Inhabited by “Ole Broxton.”

[Post Card image “The last of Chimborazo Hospital – below and to the right is the image of Braxton Harwood]

The Last of Chimborazo Hospital, at Richmond, Va., December, 1900.

A Part of General Magruder’s Ward, Occupied Since the War by Old Servant, Braxton Harwood.

All that now remains of the old Confederate Hospital at Richmond, Va., is a small frame structure occupied by a negro squatter, “Ole Broxton.” This he has dwelt in since the war. In was a part of one of the many long frame structures making up the hospital. And when these were torn down to give place for a park, Ole Broxton cut off that part of the building which he called his, and with the aid of other negroes and a mule, moved it across the street to a vacant lot. There he hopes to end his days.
On a high, level tract called Chimborazo, in Richmond, overlooking the James River, a hospital was established during the Civil War to care for the Confederate soldiers maimed in the fearful battles throughout Virginia. There was neither time nor money to erect an elaborate structure. The result was that the hospital was a collection of almost uniform frame houses, long and but one story high. These were grouped into a little settlement, with avenues running between.

Here thousands of wounded soldiers from the continually decimated Army of Virginia were taken to breathe their last, or to be nursed back to life, often by women from the best families of the South. For months before the fall of Richmond the capacity of every ward in the quaint hospital was taxed to the uttermost, and in pleasant weather cots were frequently to be seen on the shady side of the many buildings.

After the war negroes took possession. Thousands found homes in the different houses of the group, crowding them as never before. In the troublous reconstruction period, when race feeling ran high, it was perilous for a white man to enter these precincts, and many a white invader paid at night the price of his hardihood in death.

But twenty years ago the city of Richmond acquired the property for park purposes. The squatters were ordered to move. Led by Ole Broxton, many of them clubbed together to get the old hospital buildings across the street on to a vacant lot. In this they were, for the most part, successful, squatting again on property owned by private persons. But the ravages of fire depleted the number of houses which had withstood the roughness of careless removal. Others were vacated when the landowners claimed their own. Finally only the section of a house occupied by Ole Broxton remained. And a few months ago he was compelled again to remove this to a back lot on an alley.

The chimney is a specimen of Ole Broxton’s own handiwork. He modeled this after that which he occupied before the war in “the quarters” of a plantation south of Roanoke. But where the original was of stone “Ole Broxton” was forced to use brick, and bits of broken brick at that. With these are interspersed pieces of old sewer pipe. The old darky’s mixture of mud and plaster with which he attempted to cement this rubble together proved ineffective. But necessity supplying inventive genius, he arose to the occasion by pressing into service stray wires from a tall pole.

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