Entrepreneurial pluck: Dr. Rose Faughnan and Passaic Private Hospital

Long-time readers might remember our article on Dr. Rose Faughnan, the Ellis Island physician who was, herself, a classic example of the American immigrant success story. The daughter of Irish immigrants who came to the United States during the Potato Famine, she wasn't the only child in her family to achieve professional success. Among her siblings were a doctor, a lawyer and a teacher, demonstrating how quickly a family could rise to high achievement here.

A few weeks after we published the story, a Faughnan family member contacted me to share additional information on her remarkable aunt, whom the family calls Dr. Rose. It turns out that after leaving Ellis Island, she took a somewhat entrepreneurial approach to practicing medicine.

Courtesy Rose F. Stuart

It wasn't easy for women doctors to find jobs in the early 20th century, and many found civil service work in institutions like the Public Health Service or city or state governments. Even there they might find bias against them, both institutional and from colleagues. At the time, women were not eligible to take the exam to earn a commission from the PHS, so they were effectively restricted from hospital duty. Instead, they would be relegated to doing the initial exams on immigrants, determining which ones needed further examination before being allowed to enter the country. These ‘six second exams’ were necessary and important but less desirable as a work assignment, given the rigor of seeing as many as a few thousand people a day for a cursory look.

As I found from later research, Dr. Rose had been deemed "feministic" by one of her Ellis Island supervisors, likely because she wanted more challenging work. She resigned from the PHS in 1922 and continued her studies at the New York Lying-In Hospital, now the obstetrics and gynecology department of Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Like many strong-minded people before and since, Dr. Rose apparently decided to create her own career path, rather than relying on another employer. After leaving the Lying-In, she started a private hospital in Harrison but was soon persuaded by several patients to move her practice to Passaic. The community’s needs were acute: while the population was growing, only two general hospitals were available to serve residents there.

Dr. Rose bought a large house on High Street in Passaic and renovated it for use as a 12-bed hospital. Originally taking the overflow from Passaic General and St. Mary’s Hospitals, the facility was open to all physicians, with nurses on duty 24 hours a day. Eventually, as Passaic Beth Israel opened and the other hospitals expanded, Passaic Private focused more on maternity and chronic cases. A 1940 advertisement in the Passaic Medical Society Journal described the facility as “Ideal facilities for the care of invalids, chronic and convalescent cases, medical or surgical. Home cooking. Private, semi-private and ward cases. No contagious or tubercular cases accepted. Under State License.”

I haven’t been able to trace the fate of Passaic Private past that 1940 advertisement, though the Passaic city historian confirmed that the building itself was still there as recently as ten years ago. Dr. Rose died in 1947, with no mention of the hospital in her obituary in the Journal of the American Medical Association. I went to check out the property and found an empty, grassy lot. The only evidence of the building’s past existence is a stub of walkway that might have led to the front door.

It seems that the legacy of Dr. Rose’s work in Passaic is invisible to those who don’t know her story, but it’s no doubt evident in the lives she improved through her care, and the descendants of those she treated.

Doctor in the house? In this case, two!

One of the things I've always liked about living in old buildings is the possibility that someone noteworthy once lived there. Think about it: any random place might have been where a notable statesman was born, or where an inventor first became intrigued by a great idea. Our Hidden New Jersey travels sometimes unearth these gems, revealing the connection of place and deed with a wayside sign or historical marker.

Then there are the places even we would pass without a thought. They're interesting and notable in their own way, but you'd never know it because there's no sign to tell you.

The Slack-Carroll House in Dayton is a case in point. Even if we'd driven past it on a birding jaunt, I'd have considered it to be just another a nice-looking old house near a busy intersection. In reality, it represents the once-vanguard of medicine for a small farming village and the civic commitment of two noted physicians. More recently, it's become an evolving symbol of a community's desire to preserve its past and tell its own story. One of our readers, a Dayton resident himself, suggested we check it out.

We'll start with the doctors. Born locally in 1840, Clarence Slack attended Philadelphia's Jefferson Medical College during the Civil War and joined the U.S. Navy soon after graduation. He served on the gunboat USS Pembina and later extended his military service as surgeon of the third regiment of the New Jersey National Guard.

Following the war, Dr. Slack returned to New Jersey and became the first physician to have an office in Dayton. He conducted his practice from a section of his house, which was the town's first to have indoor plumbing. The Italianate-style home also accommodated a two-bed hospital, accessible through a separate entrance.

Dr. Slack took an active interest in his community beyond medicine, serving Middlesex County as a freeholder and county clerk for many years. He also held leadership roles in numerous civic, professional and fraternal groups, including the local Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the Masons, the Medical Society of New Jersey and the Order of Military Surgeons of New Jersey.

It's not clear whether his county government obligations affected his work in Dayton, but Dr. Slack eventually moved to New Brunswick in 1883 and combined forces with his nephew, who was both a physician and a pharmacist. Another doctor took over his Dayton practice briefly before succumbing to cancer, and a third reportedly also had a practice in the village for a brief time. The office and house at 354 Georges Road finally found a new, long-term resident in 1887 when Dr. Slack sold it to fellow Jefferson Medical College alumnus Edward Wallace Carroll.

Having started his own practice in Dayton two years earlier, Dr. Carroll was the community's beloved country doctor until his death in 1934. Information on him is scant, but local historians have determined that the Carroll family had an impressive record of service in the medical arena. His three older brothers, all physicians, held high posts during the Civil War, including medical advisor to President Lincoln. Another brother was the official pharmacist in charge of the U.S. Dispensary in Washington, DC. Dr. Carroll himself served several times as Middlesex County Physician, acting as expert witness for the county in court cases. He was also on the staff of St. Peter's Hospital in New Brunswick.

Unlike many of the historic places we've visited, the Slack-Carroll house told us none of this story itself. We stopped by on a Sunday afternoon and found the house quiet, with no mention of regular visiting hours on the bulletin board outside the office entrance. The Dayton Village Citizens' Commission is still researching the history of the house, the physicians and the medical care appropriate to their respective eras. As a result, the house is open only for special events, as advertised on the Commission website. Past exhibits have highlighted the life of a typical country doctor and medical practices during the Civil War.