The Brokenshire History  

A Story of A Hundred Years of Selfless, Dedicated and Excellent Ministry of Healing and Transforming of People’s Lives and Communities to the Glory of God!

-GOD Sends In The Blacks and The Sibleys:” Heal My People!”-

     On August 4, 1903, following the end of the Spanish-American War, the Rev. Robert Franklin Black arrived as the first American Protestant Missionary to serve in Davao. He was later joined on December 19, 1903 by his wife, Anna Gertrude Granger whom he married a month earlier, on November 18 on board the ship Siberia on the way to the Philippines. They were sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Boston, Massachusetts, A year after, Rev. Black wrote the Board about the need for a companion medical missionary to address the malaria and cholera epidemic affecting the area of their mission. The Blacks served the Philippines from 1902 to 1918. They returned to the US where he served 6 pastorates in Wisconsin before retiring in 1943. He died on October 29, 1952 at Schenectady, New York at age 82.

     A young American Nurse, Miss Mary Matthewson (who later became Mrs. Gohn) was with a group of early American settlers who came to Davao at the turn of the century. She volunteered in 1906 to open medical outreach clinic by the river bank of Davao at Bankerohan.

     It was on February 24, 1908, in response to Rev. Black’s call for medical mission, that Dr. Charles Thomas Sibley and wife Mrs. Annie Short Sibley reached Davao and established a clinic made of bamboo and nipa, along Magallanes Street, by the Davao River bank. Thus, the seed for a Christian Medical Service was planted and nurtured to grow into an institution first known as Davao Mission Hospital. The hospital building construction was initially started on September 1910.

    Dr. Charles Thomas Sibley served as the first Hospital Director until his retirement in April 1916. He never stopped supporting the 36-bed Davao Mission Hospital he initiated to build, that even in his retirement on January 1954, he set up the “Mrs. Charles T. Sibley Fund”, in loving memory of his wife, the proceeds of which was used for the support of the hospital. Dr. Sibley died on September 4, 1957 in Oradell, New Jersey at 83 years of age.

    From 1916, other American Missionaries, Dr. Lucius Case (1916-1920) and Dr. Roy St. Clair (1920-1924) served as Hospital Director. Other mission workers, Dr. Floyd L. Smith and wife Bessie H. Smith, Rev. Julius (1916-1928)and Mrs. Gertrude Elmer Augur served the hospital during those years. Mrs. Gertrude Elmer Augur organized and led the first Girl Scout troop in the Philippines. In 1924, a young physician, Dr. Pedro Santos, in an interim capacity, was appointed as the hospital’s first Filipino OIC Medical Director.

-A young Missionary named Dr. Herbert C. Brokenshire and His Legacy-

     A young American Missionary Doctor arrived in 1926 to assume administrative oversight of the hospital. Dr. Herbert C. Brokenshire was fresh from graduating 4th on the honor roll of his class at Cornell University Medical College in New York City. He served for 2 years as a surgeon at Methodist Episcopal Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. It was under Dr. Brokenshire’s 14 year stint that the Davao Mission Hospital buildings had its completion.

    Rev. Augur wrote Dr. Mark Ward of the American Board in Boston that Dr. Brokenshire saw from 30-40 in–patients daily and that his annual salary of $950 was too low. And according to Dr. Frank Laubach (October 1941), “Dr. Brokenshire instituted the idea of uniform beds for people of all stations in life and of all nationalities. Prices were uniform but if a poor person had nothing with which to pay, there was no charge.” In spite of this, he was able to keep the hospital financially stable.

   

     At the outbreak of World War 11, Dr. Herbert C. Brokenshire was called to active duty by the United States Navy from August 1941 to January 1, 1942. On January 2, he was taken as prisoner of war. In a posthumous citation made by John H. Sullivan, then Secretary of the United States Navy which earned him a Recommendation Ribbon, Lieutenant Commander Herbert Cecil Brokenshire was cited for his heroic service as Member of the Staff of the United Sates Naval Hospital Unit, while interned at Bilibid Prison, Manila, from May 30, 1942, to October 24, 1944, with orders from the Japanese to establish a hospital for the treatment of the Filipino and American prisoners-of-war.

Rev. Robert Franklin Black, Dr. Charles Thomas Sibley, Dr. Herbert C. Brokenshire