Guerrant Mountain Mission Bed & Breakfast Winchester (Lexington area), Kentucky One of four historical buildings still located on the grounds of the Guerrant Mountain Mission Clinic and Hospital. Contact Info | Email this page to a Friend | Click to see a map  | Additional Pages... Introduction Guest Rooms/Rates Common Area Pictures How to Find Us   Availability Search: See which rooms are available during your stay. Check in: Check out: Powered by Webervations Clear search results Rooms Available from  to  Learn more about these rooms These are our base rates - certain discounts and/or charges may apply

Edward Putney Guerrant, M.D., founder of Bethany Hospital 1915, and Guerrant Mountain Mission Clinic & Hospital 1926.

Guerrant Mountain Mission Clinic & Hospital, Winchester, KY 1926

Edward O. Guerrant, M.D., D.D., (1836-1916) Presbyterian evangelist and physician to the Appalachian Mountain poor.

Purchasing the property of Dr. Brown Ismael at 217 S. Main St., Dr. E.P. Guerrant (1888-1964) was off to an auspicious beginning. The location of his practice in Winchester, KY in 1913 was not a careless decision. His own father, Edward O. Guerrant, M.D., D.D. (1836-1916) was a renowned Presbyterian evangelist and physician to the highland peoples of the Appalachian Mountains. During his tour of service with Gen. John Hunt Morgan in the Confederate Army, Dr. E.O. Guerrant was taken back by the sparse or non-existent spiritual and health needs of the mountain people of Kentucky and, following graduation from seminary and medical school, gave the next forty years of his life to their betterment. At his death in 1916, God had blessed his work by creating: three orphanages, two colleges, fifty-six churches, schools, and mission houses, that touched the lives of 40,000 pupils, eighty-four salaried workers, hundreds of unsalaried volunteers, 362 evangelists, and 6,304 salvations for the Kingdom.

Twelve years would pass before a more spacious building located at 217 S. Main would be purchased in 1927. With $8,000 of his own money, Dr. E.P. Guerrant purchased the Edwardian architectural home and promptly placed it under the auspices of the Home Missions Department of the Southern Presbyterian Church. Two years later, on September 15, 1929, the Articles of Incorporation of the Edward O. Guerrant Memorial Association, named in honor of his evangelist/physician father, would be established. The articles present the goals of the mountain mission hospital: "to own and operate a mission hospital...to especially aid and serve the Southern people in our mountain districts; and no charge shall be made for those who are too poor to pay, nor shall any medical or surgical fee be charged to any mission worker or preacher or their dependents who are giving their lives to the Church's work."

Edward Putney's father convinced him that the dire needs of the Appalachian people were far more important than his desire to be a farmer. Highly educated for his day, Dr. E.P. Guerrant graduated from Tulane Medical School, with post-graduate work at Harvard University, Columbia University, Sloans Maternity Center, and John Hopkins, before coming to Winchester, Ky., by the prayers of his father, to open a practice for the mountain people. Winchester had been chosen because many Highlanders were too afraid to enter the big town of Lexington, Ky. for medical treatment. However, Winchester was small, the Lexington & Eastern Railroad passed through on its way to Jackson, Ky., and Winchester was close enough to Lexington and Louisville's Medical School for more serious cases.

Even through D.E.P. Guerrant opened his private practice in the McEldowney building in Court Street in 1913, he had not dismissed his fathers' exhortations to start a mountain mission clinic. In less than a year, he convinced the Ruby Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution to fund his effort to begin Winchester's first hospital.

Bethany Hospital was located in the Combs Building two doors from the Fairfax Church of Christ, which then was located on the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Maple Street. As a two story structure, Dr. Guerrant moved his private practice into the first floor, designating three hospital beds for the men's ward and a laboratory. The second floor contained one private room, three beds for the ladies ward, kitchen, and storage area. Bethany Hospital opened its doors on February 10, 1915 and received as its first inpatient, Mrs. Rice from Chevi, Kentucky.

Medical trips by Dr. E.P. Guerrant and his staff into the mountains of Eastern Kentucky continued for many years. Donations of every conceivable item poured into the mission hospital: clothing, bandages, medical equipment, sewing machines, furniture, farm equipment, produce and animals, and countless monetary donations, of which the largest (Mary Graddy Kendall and Hayden Kendall) donation helped to build the present Nurse's Home. But, no donation could match the sacrifice of Dr. E.P., his wife Lucy Mae, countless nurses such as Verda Brassfield, and the hundreds of volunteers who so generously gave without asking for anything in return than to remember Christ who made it all possible.

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