Sarah Harrison Knight, born in 1849 in Illinois to Thomas Asbury Harrison and Rebecca Harrison, moved to Minneapolis in 1860. Sarah married in 1870 to James Melvin Knight, an early school educator in Minneapolis who later died in 1888.
Sarah Harrison came from a wealthy, ‘strong pioneering Methodist’ family who believed in giving back, and that she had a social responsibility to make the world a better place. Her family became one of the founders of the Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church.
Following the death of her husband, Sarah realized that she needed to do more to lessen the many social ills that were burdening her city. The Hennepin Avenue Methodist church had started an evangelistic ministry through deaconesses who gave selflessly to improve the health of immigrants, the homeless and the destitute. Sarah offered her family home in 1891 as a residence for the deaconesses.
Yet Sarah, wanting to do more, in 1892, opened another institution - Asbury Hospital, named for her father, at 6th Street and 9th Avenue South in Minneapolis with 34 beds and a free dispensary. It was staffed by the deaconesses and herself as the superintendent. She started the first horse-drawn ambulance to make rounds to neighborhoods. After a devastating fire in 1895, Sarah purchased land in Elliot Park and built a larger hospital, which opened in 1906.
Following her death in 1928, with funds donated by her will, a newer and much larger hospital was built in St. Louis Park to carry on the work that Sarah H. Knight had started. That lauded facility is now known as Methodist Hospital. The old Asbury Hospital still lives on as an administration building and dormitory for North Central Bible College in Elliot Park.
