Local Legends: The hospital sisters

Today, Trihealth McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital serves about 100,000 patients annually and is Oxford’s only hospital. However, it wouldn’t exist without the generosity of two sisters who grew up as members of a prominent Oxford pioneer family.

Elizabeth “Bessie” McCullough, born April 12, 1863, and Daisy McCullough, born May 28, 1866, were the daughters of Thomas and Elizabeth (Girton) McCullough. Two siblings died in childhood, making them the only children of Elizabeth McCullough to survive to adulthood.

Daisy and Elizabeth both attended Oxford College, while Elizabeth later transferred to Western College for Women.

The sisters’ father became an extremely wealthy man after inheriting the family businesses and embarking on several business ventures of his own. One of these ventures was the Citizens Bank of Oxford, later the First National Bank of Oxford, which was owned by McCullough.  

The bank’s cashier, Fletcher S. Heath, later married Elizabeth McCullough in 1897. By that time, Heath was serving as vice president of the Miami Valley Bank in Hamilton and the Seventh National Bank in New York City.  

The Heaths lived a life of luxury, touring the Pacific Coast for their honeymoon, owning homes in multiple cities, and going sailing on their private yachts.

Elizabeth eventually relocated to Columbus, and then again to Chicago, following her husband in his new career as an executive with the Pure Oil Company following the failure of the Seventh National Bank.

Unlike her sister, Daisy never married, possibly because of a bad experience with an engagement when she was 30 years old.  

She very nearly fell victim to a con artist named Carl Froselle who, despite having a wife and two children in Spain, had married two other wealthy women in Chicago and Havana and had taken money from them and left town. Froselle, under an assumed name, had been courting Daisy for a long time, and the two had gotten engaged and were planning a wedding when Froselle was arrested on charges of bigamy and acquiring money under false pretenses.

Daisy remained in Oxford for the majority of her life, except for wintering in Florida and extensively touring Europe on multiple occasions. The family businesses left her as one of the wealthiest residents of Oxford.

Elizabeth died on February 27, 1937 in Daytona Beach, Florida. She was followed by Daisy three years later on October 4, 1940.  

In their wills, the sisters left a fund to the Village of Oxford for the creation and maintenance of a hospital to be named after the family, located on the site of their family home at the corner of North Poplar and Church Streets.  At the time of Daisy’s death, the fund was valued at about $1 million — $22.4 million in today’s dollars — in cash, property and bonds.

A provision was included in the donation that allowed for the Village of Oxford to hold and grow the funds until the creation of the hospital could be realized.  

A hospital committee was established and made several skillful investments. The will of Benjamin Hyde contributed an additional $375,000, equivalent to $4.5 million today, to the cause in 1951. 

McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital opened in 1957.  

The McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital Trust continued to exclusively own and operate the hospital until 2015 when it became affiliated with TriHealth. TriHealth fully acquired the hospital in 2019.

Brad Spurlock is the manager of the Smith Library of Regional History and Cummins Local History Room, Lane Libraries.  A certified archivist, Brad has over a decade of experience working with local history, maintaining archival collections and collaborating on community history projects.