Alexander De Soto (July 28, 1840 – November 11, 1936) was a Spanish-American physician, philanthropist, and businessman. He is best known for establishing Seattle's first hospital, the Wayside Mission Hospital, which he directed from 1898 to 1904. A born again Protestant, De Soto wanted to help more poor, homeless, sick, and people with addiction, and wanted to create a business that would finance his numerous philanthropic plans. At the zenith of his business career, De Soto was involved in mining businesses in Chile, Peru, Spain, North and South America, South Africa, and Mexico. He co-founded the De Soto Placer Mining company which conducted more mining activity than any other company of the time in Snohomish County, Washington, and was the first businessman to introduce dredge mining to Alaska. The company-owned Alaskan lands were considered the richest and best-equipped in the world, featuring the largest dredges and steam shovels available in 1903.
De Soto was born in the western Pacific Ocean's Caroline Islands, and educated in Spain. He arrived America in 1862, and served as a navy surgeon in Federal Navy during the American Civil War. In 1867, he worked as surgeon in Alaska. He was one of the leaders of the Carlist movement. From 1870 to 1872, De Soto lived in Sweden, where he served as physician for King Charles XV. Later, he moved his practice to Chile and Peru. In 1879 and 1880, he served as an army surgeon for Chile in the War of the Pacific. De Soto's life took a turn when he developed an interest in gambling, which led to a morphine addiction. He was saved and converted to Protestantism, becoming a member of the New York Crittenton and the Bleecker Street Missions, and later of the Bowery Mission. In 1879, De Soto led a gospel expedition to Alaska, which failed to reach Klondike ending instead in Seattle, Washington, where De Soto established the city's first hospital and continued his missionary and philanthropic work.
De Soto started other business ventures to finance his missionary projects. He was involved in planning a railroad to Alaska as well as his mining business. Only his mining business was initially successful, as the Granite Falls mine in Snohomish County turned a profit. De Soto's decision to reinvest the proceedings into a gargantuan project in Alaska, although initially very promising, proved mistaken. De Soto successfully secured a significant investment fund and delivered state-of-the-art dredging equipment to Alaska, but the business idea failed, as his mining company's land didn't yield enough gold. De Soto was accused of mismanagement, and after several more unsuccessful attempts, he abandoned the mining business and returned to medicine. In 1910, he unsuccessfully ran for King County Coroner, and then went to Sweden, where he served as physician and dietician for the King of Norway from 1910 to 1915. Later, he returned to New York. In 1936, at the age of 95, as he was working as a dietician on the private yacht Centaur, he died soon after falling into the Gowanus Bay in Brooklyn.
In the 1920s, an historical plaque and an anchor marker were installed on the Washington Street Public Boat Landing in Seattle to commemorate De Soto and the Wayside Mission and Hospital.
Early life and family
De Soto was born on July 28, 1840, in the Caroline Islands, a Spanish colony at the time. His parents were Fernando De Soto, born in 1791 on the De Soto estate near Barcelona, and Hedwig Leonora De Soto from Austria (she died in 1862). Alexander's father was a general in Spain's military forces, and at one point, the Spanish minister of war. He served as governor of the Caroline Islands, then the lieutenant governor of Puerto Rico, and later as a diplomat until his retirement at 80. Fernando De Soto died at 111 years old.
According to the family's oral history, Alexander De Soto was a great-great-grandson of Hernando de Soto, the famous Spanish explorer who discovered the Mississippi River. As of 1906, De Soto was one of five living descendants of Hernando, including his brother who was a Catholic bishop in Rome; a sister, who lived in Spain; and two cousins.
Education
De Soto spent his early years of education in Sant Quintí de Mediona near Barcelona at a Jesuit college.
He went on to become a surgeon and physician. He received a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Spain in Madrid, and proceeded to study in Heidelberg, Germany, where he received a Legum Doctor degree. In 1870, he studied in Uppsala, Sweden.
Career
Early military, civic, and medical career (1862–1880)
In 1862, 22-year old De Soto came to America to study American naval tactics as a Spanish legation (diplomat). He served as a navy surgeon in the U.S. Navy during the American Civil War. In 1867, De Soto worked as a surgeon in Alaska. In 1868, he went back to Spain and became one of the activists of the Carlist movement. He stayed in Spain until the early 1870s, when he left to study and work in Sweden.
From 1870 to 1872, De Soto worked as a surgeon and professor in Uppsala, Sweden, and served as physician for King Charles XV (who reigned from 1859 to 1872). Between 1872 and 1875, De Soto moved his medical practice to Chili and Peru. In 1879 and 1880, he served as a Chilean army surgeon in the War of the Pacific, a dispute between Chile and a Bolivian-Peruvian alliance.
In the late 1870s, De Soto developed an interest in card games and gambling, and briefly worked as croupier in Berlin, Germany. In 1880, De Soto went to London; from there he returned to America, settling in New York.
Gambling and addiction (1880–1890)
De Soto continued to gamble while settling in New York in 1880. He also developed a morphine addiction. Later, he moved further west and gambled in Colorado mining camps.
Missionary and medical career (1890–1936) In 1890, De Soto experienced religious salvation and converted to Protestantism. He quit gambling and overcame his morphine addiction. The experience prompted him to start active missionary work. He returned to New York State and briefly worked in leather goods manufacturing in Freeport, Long Island.
In New York, he attended the Crittenton and the Bleecker Street Missions. In 1897, he joined the New York Bowery Mission.
After engaging in missionary work for several years, he decided to create and lead a gospel expedition to Alaska.
Gospel mission to Alaska (1897–1898)
In November 1897, seven members of the New York Bowery Mission, led by De Soto, started a trip to the Klondike region to bring worship and gospel sessions to Alaskan gold miners and natives. Their main goal was to establish a mission similar to those in New York in Dawson City. They were determined to hold worship meetings at every point on their route from New Jersey to California and Washington, and after going through the Chilkoot Pass to Juneau and Dawson.
The travelers also planned to reach Klondike and search for gold, calculating that the gold, if found, would sponsor their missionary work in Klondike as well as in New York. De Soto also wanted to establish a non-profit hospital in the region.
However, the group never reached Klondike. In November 1898, a year after their departure from New York, they reached Seattle. They were thwarted by unfavorable weather conditions and De Soto's injury—he broke his leg and needed time to recover. De Soto learned that there was no public hospital in Seattle, and decided to build one.
Wayside Mission and Hospital (1898–1909)
In 1898, having started a small medical practice in Seattle, De Soto invested much of his own money to establish the Seattle Wayside Mission, of which he became president. The first Mission meeting took place on November 8, 1898, in a building on the Railroad avenue.
The daily indoor and outdoors mission meetings consisted of songs, prayers, preaching, and testimonies. Every meeting provided free mental and medical support for the needy people of the city, with a focus on drug, alcohol, and gambling addicts. Homeless people were also provided with temporary housing.
Seeing how many people returned to Seattle poor, sick, and injured from gold fields after the Klondike Gold Rush, De Soto decided to build the Wayside Mission Hospital. There was no other establishment in Seattle where people could get free medical treatment until 1909, when the city opened its own public hospital.
De Soto met Captain Amos C. Benjamin and Judge Roger S. Greene as fellow members of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Seattle. In the spring of 1899, they co-founded the Seattle Benevolent Society in order to lobby for and recruit investors in the establishment of the Wayside Hospital. Thanks to De Soto's experience in treating the sick and addicted, he was highly esteemed by the Seattle police department and other influential friends, who convinced the city to assist him in opening the hospital. The Wayside Mission Hospital was established on April 1, 1899, as the first free hospital in the city. De Soto invested his own money into the establishment as well as recruiting contributions from businesses and citizens. De Soto's good friend, business colleague, and philanthropist John J. Habecker became one of the biggest investors of the Wayside Mission Hospital, and helped manage it.
In their formative years, the Wayside Mission and Hospital were supported by the Free Methodist, Baptist, and Congregational churches of Seattle. For over a year, the North Baptist Church of Seattle provided the bread for the mission. The Seattle Seminary helped the mission organize meetings. A number of business companies and well-known people of Seattle helped provide necessary medicines and food. In 1903, English actress Rose Coghlan donated her earnings from three performances of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray in Seattle to the hospital. That same year, it was announced that all profits from De Soto's mining properties in Granite Falls, Washington would be dedicated to charities across Puget Sound including the Wayside Hospital. The mission and hospital's primary goal was the treatment of poverty-related illnesses and industrial accidents, treating lumberjacks, sailors, miners, and others. De Soto became determined to provide medical assistance of all kinds of starving, sick, and lonely people neglected by the government, many of whom were in hopeless conditions due to difficult illnesses, but mostly due to severe opium and morphine addictions. Soon, treating drug addicts became De Soto's specialty, and it was stated that addicts left the hospital almost cured.
It was widely known that De Soto himself visited the streets, bars, saloons, and other public places to find those who needed rescuing and medical assistance. On a number of occasions De Soto dealt with suicidal patients retrieving them from the Seattle harbor. The hospital became well known across the Pacific Coast, and sheltered poor and sick people from across the Puget Sound region.
Floating hospital establishment (1900)
In 1900, it was decided to expand the Wayside Mission Hospital to new territory. The members of the Seattle Benevolent Society bought the steamer Idaho from the Cahn & Cohn company, and renovated it to be a hospital ship. The city provided a spot to dock the vessel at the Jackson Street slip. De Soto resigned from the Seattle Benevolent Society to be able to lease the boat from them and build his hospital there.
The Seattle Benevolent Society started fundraising. Immediately after purchase, all the steamer's machinery was ripped out to provide space for wards. At first, only a small part of the ship was made into hospital bunks, and several patients housed there for treatment supervised by the mission's volunteers. The plan was to develop two decks for hospital wings divided into men's and women's wards.