Talk:Nathan Francis Mossell/Temp

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Nathan Francis Mossell (July 27, 1856 – October 27, 1946) was the first African American graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1882. He did post-graduate training at hospitals in Philadelphia and London. In 1888 he was the first African American physician elected as member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society. He helped found the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School in West Philadelphia in 1895, which he led as chief of staff and medical director until he retired in 1933.

Early life and education
Nathan Mossell was born in Hamilton, Canada in 1856, the fourth of six children. Both his parents were born in Maryland but had moved their family and their three children to Canada in 1853 to escape racial discrimination. His father Aaron Albert Mossell I (1824-?) was a brickmaker. His great-grandfather was from West Africa and was brought to America as a slave. His mother was Eliza Bowers (1824-?), a free black whose family had been transported to Trinidad when she was a child. Mossell and Eliza met and married in Baltimore after her return from Trinidad. In Canada the senior Aaron Mossell went to school and set up his own brick-making business.

Nathan's siblings were the following: :
 * May (1848 - ), born Maryland;
 * Charles (1850 - ), born Maryland, graduated from Lincoln University and studied theology in Boston; became a missionary in Haiti;
 * Boy, (c. 1853-c. 1870), born Maryland; died in Lockport, New York;
 * Alvarilla (b. 1857- ), born Hamilton, Canada; joined her brother Charles as a missionary in Haiti; and
 * Aaron Albert Mossell II (1863-1951), b. Hamilton, Canada; he was the first African American to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania law school; he married Mary Louisa Tanner (1866-?).

Nathan was the uncle of Sadie Tanner Mossell (1898-1989), who in 1921 was the first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in the United States.

Medical career
Mossell did his post-graduate training with Dr. D. Hayes Agnew in the Out-Patient Surgical Clinic of the University Hospital. His post-graduate studies included an internship in the Guy's Hospital, Queens College Hospital and St Thomas' Hospital in London, England.

In 1888 Mossell was elected to membership in the Philadelphia County Medical Society, the first black physician to do so. In August 1895 he founded the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School. He served as chief-of-staff and medical director there until his retirement in 1933.

In 1948 Douglass Hospital merged with another predominantly black hospital, Mercy Hospital.

Marriage
He married Gertrude Emily Hicks Bustill (1948-1855) on July 12, 1893 in Philadelphia. Gertrude was the mixed-race daughter of Charles Hicks Bustill (1816-1890), who was of African, European and Lenape ancestry, and Emily Robinson. Together they had the following children: Florence Mossell and Mary Campbell Mossell.

He was the uncle by marriage of Paul Robeson and his siblings, children of his wife's sister Maria Louisa Bustill and her husband William Drew Robeson.

Death
He died on October 27, 1946 in Philadelphia.