The Meriter Archives 

The Meriter Archives is a repository for the documents, printed material, photographs, artifacts, and memorabilia from Meriter and the institutions that proceeded it. 

Meriter has a complex history, and its archives are similarly complex. The institution traces its roots back to two separate hospitals: Madison General Hospital, incorporated in 1898, and Methodist Hospital, incorporated in 1919. Both hospitals also ran nursing schools for much of the twentieth century. These institutions' parent companies merged in 1987 to become Meriter Health Services, which officially partnered with UnityPoint Health to become UnityPoint Health-Meriter in 2014. Each of these entities is represented in the archives, along with several affiliated clinics.  

A large portion of the archival holdings are administrative records that document day-to-day events and long-term strategic planning at Madison General, Methodist, Meriter, and related organizations. The archives also contain a wealth of historic photographs, patient ledgers and records, scrapbooks, nurses' uniforms, awards, dedicatory plaques, medical equipment, and other objects. Taken together, the archives paint a vivid picture of medical and nursing history in Madison over the past 120 years. 

Thanks to a generous donation from an alumna of the Madison General Hospital School of Nursing, work on cataloguing and digitizing the Meriter Archives began in late 2016. Guides to the collection and online access will be added as they are completed. In the meantime, please contact the Meriter Foundation with any inquiries.

Read our blog: Meriter Archives: A Complex History