The author, Steve Bailey, is outreach coordinator at the Anson County Historical Society. 

This week I’ll provide some details about the Ashe-Covington Medical Museum at 127 East Wade St., on the corner of North Washington and East Wade streets. The building was built about 1890 by Dr. Edmund Fountaine Ashe (1822-1892) for his medical practice. I presume that his son, Dr. Edmund Strudwick Ashe (1858-1925), was in partnership with him because I recently saw an old photo of the medical museum and the sign “Dr. E.F. Ashe & Son” was posted above the door.

Dr. E.F. Ashe was an amazing surgeon and ahead of his time when it came to treating his patients. It was unheard of in the 1860s for a woman to survive breast cancer, but according to the Wadesboro Argus newspaper in the summer of 1869, Dr. Ashe successfully saved the life of an unnamed lady who was suffering from a severe case of breast cancer.

When Dr. E.F. Ashe died in 1892, I presume that his son took over the practice and was on his own caring of the citizens of Wadesboro until his untimely passing in 1925. Both father and son are buried at Eastview Cemetery in Wadesboro.

Dr. James Madison Covington Jr. (1878-1958) arrived in Wadesboro in 1900 with his father, James Madison Covington Sr. (1840-1917), working in partnership. The older Covington passed in 1917, leaving the younger Covington to make it on his own. According to museum history, in 1925 Dr. Covington took over the building owned by the Ashe family for so many years and made it his own for 33 years, until he died in 1958.

In the 1960s and 1970s the old doctor’s office was home to the Anson Record newspaper. In the mid-70s the building was home to a cablevision business and this was an ongoing concern until 2001 when Time-Warner Cable consolidated with the Time-Warner franchise in Rockingham and relocated to Richmond County. Time-Warner Cable saw the historical significance in the old building and deeded it to the Anson County Historical Society. The board of directors turned the old building into a medical museum and named it in honor of the doctors who managed it. When they announced their plan in the local newspapers and the historical society newsletter, people started donating old medical and dental equipment – and people are still donating items of medical and dental interest.

Give us a call at (704) 694-6694 to make an appointment to tour our Ashe-Covington Medical Museum.