General Content
Ralph Roswell Fitch was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1878. Considered a native of Massachusetts, he was a graduate of the Boston Latin School and a member of the last high school class to be admitted directly to Harvard University Medical School. He came to Rochester in 1905 and was appointed to the City Hospital Out Patient Department on December eighth of that year. Thirteen months later, he became the Orthopedist to the Hospital, replacing the late Dr. Louis Weigel, a position he held for the next thirty-two years. From 1914 to 1919, he served in various French and American military hospitals. For this, he was awarded the French Order of the Legion of Honor. In 1909, he married Ruth Cowles Hard Bartlett. Several years after her death, he remarried, this time to Virginia Kellog.
Dr. Fitch's lifetime accomplishments included President of the American Orthopedic Society, founding member of the Inter-Urban Orthopedic Society, and a founder of the Planned Parenthood League of Rochester. He died January 31, 1970, in White Plains, following a long illness.