William Worrall Mayo - Rochester

Rochester

In 1863, Mayo finally was engaged as a military surgeon for the draft board in Rochester, Minnesota. He left his family for that position and soon found the new city to his liking, so they joined him there in early 1864. A year later, his son Charles Horace Mayo was born.

William W. Mayo opened a medical practice in Rochester, also spending time as a city mayor, alderman, and member of the school board. He also served in the Minnesota State Senate 1891-1895. Here, the number of patients was large enough to support the family with no need for him to assume additional jobs. Mayo spent some time in New York and Pennsylvania in 1869 studying surgical techniques.

The event that is usually credited with beginning the "Mayo Clinic Story" happened in 1883, when a tornado devastated Rochester. With the assistance of his sons, other regional doctors, and the local Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota, William Mayo organized treatment of the injured. Mother Alfred Moes of the Sisters of St. Francis convinced him to help her establish a new hospital under her direction, forming St. Marys Hospital in 1889. At the time, only three people were on the surgical staff: William Worrall Mayo as chief, and his two sons as the other principal medical practitioners. No other doctors accepted invitations to join them at the time, perhaps because St. Marys was a Roman Catholic Hospital and anti-Catholic bias was rather common in central Minnesota during that period.