This photograph album belonged to an American medical officer who worked in the American Red Cross Hospital in Evreux, France. There are 289 photographs of wounded American, French, British, and German soldiers. Photographs show the wards and operating rooms, hospital staff, patients, prosthetics, Fourth of July celebrations featuring Uncle Sam, basket weaving and woodworking, a funeral, scenery around the city, and other activities of the hospital in 1918. Some of the photographs were taken by Lewis Hine. Many of the photographs feature Major Ralph Roswell Fitch, who was the hospital's administrator at the time and likely the creator of this album.

Ralph Roswell Fitch was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada on October 18, 1878. He was the youngest child of Robert Stanley Fitch (1846 – 1925) and Abbie Hyde Fitch (1848 – 1946).  Ralph’s father was an American, a native of Massachusetts. Ralph had one brother who survived infancy, Stanley Gay Hyde Fitch (1876 – 1977).

The Fitch family moved to Massachusetts where Ralph attended the Boston Latin School. From there, Ralph attended Harvard University Medical School. Fitch graduated in 1903 and moved to Rochester, New York in 1905 where he was appointed to the City Hospital Out Patient Department. In 1906, Fitch became an Orthopedic Surgeon.

In 1909, Ralph married Ruth Cowles Hart Fitch (1864 – 1942). While the couple did not have biological children together, Fitch was the step father to Ruth’s two surviving children from previous marriages, Dorothy Robinson Macomber (1888 – 1951) and Agnes Pomeroy Bartlett Curtis (1901 – 1997).

From 1914 to 1919, he served in French and American Military Hospitals. He was awarded the French Order of the Legion of Honor for his service.

Ruth Fitch died in 1942 and Ralph was remarried a few years later to Virginia Ralph Fitch (1902 – 1990), becoming a step father to her two children from her previous marriage, John Francis Kellogg lll (1925 – 1998) and Katherine Kimball Kellogg Rounds (1929 – 1993).

Fitch returned to his position at Rochester after the war and served there until his retirement in 1948. He was a member of the American and New York State Medical Societies. He the President of the American Orthopedic Society, founding member of the Inter-Urban Orthopedic Society, and founder of the Planned Parenthood League of Rochester.

On January 31, 1970 Ralph Roswell Fitch died from pneumonia. He was 91 years old. Ralph is buried in the Forest Hill Cemetery in Northeast Harbor, Maine.

This photograph album belonged to an American medical officer who worked in the American Red Cross Hospital in Evreux, France. There are 289 photographs of wounded American, French, British, and German soldiers. Photographs show the wards and operating rooms, hospital staff, patients, prosthetics, Fourth of July celebrations featuring Uncle Sam, basket weaving and woodworking, a funeral, scenery around the city, and other activities of the hospital in 1918. Some of the photographs were taken by Lewis Hine. Many of the photographs feature Major Ralph Roswell Fitch, who was the hospital's administrator at the time and likely the creator of this album.