Museum seeks copies of birth certificates from folks delivered by Holmes Memorial Hospital staff

Museum seeks copies of birth certificates from folks delivered by Holmes Memorial Hospital staff

Were you born in the Sibley Holmes Memorial Hospital in Foley or did one of the doctors or nurses from the hospital come to your home and deliver you? If you are one of the “Holmes Babies,” the Hospital Museum would like a copy of your birth certificate. Each person would get a 8 1/2 x 11 inch page in the musuem birth certificate directory. You would be able to include a baby picture or other information on your page. Just drop off a copy of your birth certificates to the Hospital Museum at 111 W Laurel St. in downtown Foley. Contact Museum Director Bill Swanson at bswanson@cityoffoley.org or 608.206.1016 for more info.

“We have over 100 copies of birth certificates of people born in the hospital or delivered at home by one of the doctors or nurses during the time the hospital was in operation,’’ Swanson said. “We know there are probably over 100 more birth certificates we do not have.’’

Pictured: Located above a still-working drugstore, the Holmes Medical Museum is housed in Foley’s first hospital from 1936 to 1958. When the hospital closed, the rooms were preserved just as they looked. Visitors can stroll through the operating room and patient rooms of the four-bed hospital. Steel tools used to pinch, poke, and prod are laid out in cases and and on stark metal trays. The musuem is open Monday though Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. It is located at 111 W Laurel Ave, (hwyu. 59) in Foley. More info: 251-970-1818.