Dr. Robert A. Broady, a practicing Sevier County physician from 1937 to 1983, began a dairy at this site around the 1940s with one half-breed Jersey cow. A family whose child was suffering from diphtheria needed money for treatment in Knoxville General Hospital, so Dr. Broady bought a cow from the family and the child went immediately to the hospital. Before long others began paying for treatment with cows. Dr. Broady never accepted a family's only milk cow but instead asked for a calf the following spring. By 1952 Broady's Ayrshire dairy herd had the best record for quantity of milk produced in the entire southeast. Broady Dairy sold to milk plants in Knoxville. His hospital served the dairy milk, and he sold it to local residents for fifty cents a gallon; more available milk meant less likelihood of rickets, caused by vitamin D deficiency. John Wright worked at the dairy which grew to three hundred cows and included LeConte Farm on Lower Middle Creek. Arthur Byrd, Ernest Hatcher, Robert Murphy and others tended the farm which produced prize milk cows shown in the county fair. The animals were trained to give milk with radios blaring in the barn after it was observed that the fair's loudspeakers were making the cows nervous and reducing milk production.

At the age of 12, this son of a Presbyterian minister earned $4.00 a week working from before dawn to dusk on a large fertile Indiana farm. In 1917 his family moved from the Midwest to White Pine, Tennessee. Dr. Broady entered college to study agriculture, but in 1923 a "God calling" and a presentation at Maryville College by a medical missionary changed his life. At Maryville, he crossed paths with Ellen Cox of Seymour. The two dated while he attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and she was at Philadelphia General Hospital Nursing School. They married in 1930.By 1933 he and Nurse Broady were serving as medical missionaries in China where over 50,000 patients were examined or treated throughout their five year tenure which included the 1936 malaria epidemic. The Chinese were so grateful for the two Americans that they presented them with a silk banner: "Liang Nam Sha Yeu" or "It has rained south of Laing River" which meant that the Broady couple treated everyone the same, rich or poor. Their growing family left China in 1937 as the threat of World War II loomed.

In 1937 the two moved to Mrs. Broady's native county and opened a medical office over Wade's Department Store in Sevierville. The town doctor made numerous house calls, switching from car to mule to reach back country homes, sometimes crossing treacherous rain-swollen or frozen waters. In 1940 Broady Hospital opened on Bruce Street; he felt this was his greatest accomplishment. Practicing for nearly half a century, Dr. Broady delivered 7,107 babies, a sizeable portion of the county population. Many of these were assisted by Mrs. Broady who also taught nursing and managed the hospital. Nurse Broady was an efficient caring woman whose advice in the hospital found its way into the homes and daily lives of wives and mothers. The couple had six children, two of whom died in separate accidents before they were grown.

Mr. W. J. Brown, Church of God Children's Home Director, wrote of Dr. and Mrs. Broady in 1983, "You are a tonic for all who know you. We love you and always will."

Show me all markers in:  Pigeon Forge, TN  |  Sevier County  |  37863  |  Tennessee  |  United States of America

Pigeon Forge
Pigeon Forge Attractions
First Baptist Church Pigeon Forge Historical
Pigeon River Railroad
First United Methodist Church of Pigeon Forge and Pigeon Forge Academy
Sevier County Veterans Memorial
Pigeon Forge Elementary School/Pigeon Forge Canning Factory
Pigeon Forge Iron Works
Unionists Within the Confederacy
Early Pigeon Forge Historical

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