Category Archives: Health Care

December 8, 2014 · 10:22 am

Anniversary of Pearl Harbor

(December 7, 1947 letter to St. John’s Hospital, Lowell, MA used with permission of the Daughters of Charity Archives)

Over the weekend we marked the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. The Provincial Annals for the following day recorded the news of the events in Hawaii.

December 8 [1941]
Our great Feast of the Immaculate Conception, celebrated with Solemn High Mass at eight o’clock. Father Cloonan was the celebrant, assisted by Seminarians … This day is ever to be remembered, as the news was made known that the United States had declared war with Japan. It had been rumored for some days past that this dreaded news might be expected. The fighting is going on in Manila.

In the years following World War II the American provinces of the Daughters of Charity received many letters similar to the one below. In response both provinces of the Daughters of Charity in the U.S. organized war relief efforts which sent food and clothing to Sisters and poor persons in post-war Europe. This letter comes from the records of St. John’s Hospital in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Heinburg, Dec. 7, 1947
My Most Reverend and dear Sister:

The grace of Our Lord be with us forever.

Through Very Reverend Weiser, (Boston, Mass), I heard of the charity and benevolence of you, most reverend and dear Sister. Permit me, therefore, now before Christmas to knock on the door of your sympathetic heart and to beg for soap, starch, [wool] stockings, Cornette linen, and linen, etc., and whatever your kindness and generosity can spare. We are most grateful for anything, as we were completely burned out, and through the ration cards we can barely obtain the bare necessities with the greatest difficulty. Two third [sic] of our Motherhouse in Graz was destroyed by fire and for the last two years the Sisters are living in a private home, awaiting the completion of the building of the motherhouse, God willing, and hope to have it ready in the coming year. We are contented and happy due to the fact that we are working in an Orphanage connected with the mills.

May the Divine Child bless and reward you. I wish you, most reverend and Dear Sister a very blessed and holy Christmas and New Year, I remain in the love of Jesus and Mary, my dear most reverend Sister.

Your humble,
Sister Girarda Ulz,
Austria

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Throwback Thursday: St. Mary’s Hospital Evansville, 1894

1894 brochure for St. Mary’s Hospital, Evansville, Indiana (used with permission of Daughters of Charity Provincial Archives)

For Throwback Thursday, an 1894 advertisement for St. Mary’s Hospital in Evansville, Indiana, about the features of its new building. Among the new features were electricity and steam heating. The “Brief Descriptive” reads:
“Cost of Building: $110,000
A four-story structure of pressed brick
Large, handsome grounds
Five wards, 23 Private Rooms
Hospital Capacity 130 Beds
Twenty-four Baths, with Hot and Cold Water
Electric Bath on every floor.
Twenty Lavatories.
Two Dumb Waiters on each floor.
Two Pantries on each floor.
Modern Steam Elevator.
Steam Heat throughout the Building
Direct Outside Ventilation in each room, ward, and hall.
Two General Operating Rooms with tiled floors
One Special Operating Room for the most delicate surgical work, supplied with distilled water, hot and cold, from two tanks, each fifty gallons capacity.
Lighting of the Operating Rooms is such that operations are performed equaloly well by night or day.
The Institution thoroughly equipped with all modern Electrical and Surgical Appliances.
The only Hospital in Southern Indiana with a resident house surgeon.
Trained Nurses. Nursing in charge of a graduate of Eastern school.
Well equipped Pharmacy in charge of a competent pharmacist
The very best Kitchen and Culinary arrangement.
The entire institution under Sister Loretto, who had had a hospital experience extending over twenty-five years.”

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Filed under Health Care, Ministries

October 15, 2014 · 6:00 am

DC mission in Virginia City, Nevada

By Sister Margaret Ann Gainey, archivist, Daughters of Charity Province of the West, Los Altos Hills, CA. Images courtesy of Sister Estela Morales, D.C.

In October 1864, Sisters Frederica McGrath, Elizabeth Russell and Xavier Schauer left San Francisco and journeyed by steamer, train and stage to Virginia City, Nevada Territory. Sisters arrived in Virginia City five years after silver was first discovered and it was amid this young mining community that they opened St. Mary’s School and Orphan Asylum (and later, St. Mary’s Hospital).

It was with fondness that the Sisters remembered their days in Virginia City and with a sense of history that they preserved them for future generations through their writings. It is with gratitude and pride that we share an excerpt from the Annals describing the Sisters’ journey to Virginia City:

“On the fifth of October 1864, Sisters Frederica, Xavier and M. Elizabeth were missioned to Virginia City, Nevada Territory. . . . To describe the trip hither would exhaust more wit than I have at my command. Eastward from Sacramento there was then but thirty miles of the Central Pacific Rail Road complete, so that the principal part of the journey was made in stages. Our coach was a great swinging and swaging stage drawn by six handsome horses. Our journey was a remarkably safe one, for once only did the axle-tree snap in twain; and well for us it occurred on the level road, for had we been on or near the summit of the Sierras, we might never have seen Virginia City. It was nothing unusual in those days to hear of stages and their occupants being precipitated from the dizzy heights, hundreds of feet below.

When we reached Strawberry Station in California, we were obliged to remain there three hours in a dilapidated cabin. And passing from its entrance to the rear some two yards to partake of some refreshments, we stepped over three men who were sleeping soundly on the softest plank in the floor, wrapped up in their blankets. It gave us no very pleasant anticipations of mining life at our destined home!

We got into Virginia City about two o’clock. . . . . Virginia City is situated midway up the steep side of Mount Davidson, seven thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea and in the clear Nevada atmosphere is visible for many miles. At the time of our arrival it claimed a population of some fifteen thousand; and all day long half or nearly half swarmed the streets, whilst the remainder was down among the drifts and tunnels of the Comstock hundreds of feet down. And often have we heard the faint boom of a blast down in the bowels of the earth.” . . . .

Over fifty Sisters served the people of Virginia City between 1864 and 1897. They were loved and respected in this mining community where they taught the children of the miners, nursed the men who were wounded in the mines and cared for the orphaned children when the miners died. Through the years, miners and their families generously supported the orphanage, school and hospital.