Minor Private Hospital was founded in January 1906, and a two-story, brick hospital building constructed at 1420 Spring Street in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood. In September 1906, a school for nurses was established at Minor Hospital, with a three-year course of training. Minor Private Hospital closed in 1928, and the last nursing school class graduated in 1930. The nurses later organized the Minor Hospital Alumnae Association, and the Seattle group continued to meet into the 1950s, hosting events such as banquets and holiday parties. In 1948, the Association began compiling a memoir scrapbook for presentation to the Seattle Historical Society, now the Museum of History & Industry.

Minor Private Hospital was named for Thomas Taylor Minor (1844-1889), a physician, businessman, civic and political leader who founded the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway and served as mayor of Seattle and Port Townsend, Washington. This page from the "Memoirs of Minor Hospital Alumnae" scrapbook has a black and white photographic portrait of Thomas T. Minor, taken about 1889, with a dedication poem handwritten below. A biographic essay on the following page was condensed from a biography, "Dr. Minor," written by his grandson Thomas Minor Pelly in 1933.