This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Parsons, Simpson, Moore Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/CkB.2ACI/1991.1.1.1 Message Board Post: Following up on your request about Cornelia Simpson Parsons: This is taken from the book, "To Lend a Hand: History of King's Daughters Hospital" by Patricia K. Benoit and Weldon G. Cannon (1996), Chapter 3: [beginning quotation] A faithful member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, later renamed Grace Presbyterian, Cornelia Simpson Parsons was the wife of Avery H. Parsons, a locomotive engineer for the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway. Born in Virginia in 1851, she had married at about age 17 to her first husband. They had a son who died at age 16. She later married Mr. Parsons and moved to Texas, where she plunged into charitable and religious work. Her husband, too, became active in civic and municipal affairs. They had no children of their own, but later reared her niece and nephew. Mr. Parsons parlayed his railroad income into vast real estate holdings in Temple and throughout Texas and was president and major stockholder of the Desdemona-Temple Oil Company. Even when his railroad duties forced him to move to South Texas in 1899, Mrs. Parsons chose to remain in Temple to continue as King's Daughters Hospital superintendent until 1904. Her friends and coworkers describ! ed her as a tireless worker, a manager who led by example and an extremely efficient administrator. Mrs. Parsons died eight months after her husband in 1920 of complications following an appendectomy. Even as she lay dying in her hospital room, she encouraged the nurses and her friends to concentrate on "the higher and better things of life." "Those who were near her bedside," the Temple Daily Telegram reported, "felt it a privilege so to be, for she spoke so often and so beautifully of her going [to heaven].... Mrs. Parsons loved her fellow man, worshipped her God and was charitable at all times to a marked degree." [end of quotation] Mrs. Parsons is the founding administrator for King's Daughters Hospital in Temple, which still stands and operates. In 1904 she joined Temple Sanitarium (later renamed Scott & White Memorial Hospital and Clinic) as hospttal administrator. She was never a nurse, always a hospital superintentent (what we would call an administrator or manager). Both she and her husband are buried in Hillcrest Cemetery in Temple, Texas. buried with them is the child they adopted late in life. For further reference, please see "Men of Steel, Women of Spirit: The History of the Santa Fe Hospital" (1991) and "For the Good of Humanity: 100 Years of Surgery at Scott & White (1992)," both by Patricia K. Benoit. Scott & White has the books, I believe. Call 254-724-3047. Good luck in your research. Mrs. Parsons is an early leader in hospital administration and deserves a more extensive history on her pioneering hospital administration.