Tag Archives: Archives

November 11, 2025 · 10:01 am

Sister-Veterans of World War II

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

-Isaiah 2:3-4

We would like to take this opportunity to highlight a few Daughters of Charity of this Province who served their country prior to joining the Community.

To clarify, this post will NOT be about the Sister-Veterans of the Civil War, who served during their Community lives.  Nor will it be about the Sister-Veterans of the Spanish-American War, World War I, or World War II who did the same.  This post is merely about four Daughters of Charity who, during their lives before joining the Community, served something greater than themselves in a slightly different way during the Second World War. 

This post is also not meant to disparage or ignore the service of any Daughters of Charity whom we failed to include here.  “Veteran status” is not a search terms that we filter for among the Daughters whose files are in the Archives.  It is more something that we stumbled upon over time.  It also may open the possibility of a part 2 in the future…

So, without further ado:

Sister Karen Baustian

Sister Karen started as an unenlisted electronics tech for the Army Air Corps, the future U.S. Air Force, following her brother into the service.  She then enlisted in the U.S. Women’s Marine Corps in 1943, serving for 27 months as a Radio Tech.  She began her service directing communications on the Paris Island Marine Corp base in South Carolina before volunteering for active service.  This took her to Hawaii, where she repaired equipment for use in the Pacific Theater of the War.

After her honorable discharge in 1945, Sister Karen remained in the Marine Corp. Reserves until 1949.  Looking to continue in her line of work after the War in Minneapolis, she was rejected from numerous jobs for being a woman.  She instead utilized the GI Bill to go to school for broadcast journalism and for the next eight years worked in radio broadcasting in the rural parts of the state.  As she traveled around the state in the 1950s, she began attending Bible study and growing in her own faith, when a priest directed her to the Daughters of Charity.

Photo of Sister Karen Baustian's funeral clipped from provincial newsletter, 1992 with full military honors
Picture and notice from Sister Karen’s funeral in the Provincial newsletter, 1992

Sister Marguerite Eavey

Seeing that she had no brothers to represent her family in the War effort, Sister Marguerite volunteered at age 20 for the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (or the WAVES Program).  Her service as a Pharmacist’s Mate, 1st Class, lasted from 1943 to 1945 and occurred at the Naval hospitals in Philadelphia and Norfolk, Virginia.  She translated this service into attending the Worcester School of Business and becoming a secretary for the Department of the Interior after the War ended. 

At age 30, she returned to her hometown of Martinsburg, West Virginia, where she went to school under the Daughters and applied to enter the Community.

Headshot of Sister Marguerite Eavey in coiffe habit

Sister Regina Lindner

Another WAVES veteran, Sr. Regina Lindner actually began her Seminary as a Daughter of Charity, stopped to serve in 1941, and returned to the Community later.  She also achieved the rank of Pharmacist’s Mate, 1st class, serving in Naval hospitals in California.  Four more of her siblings remained with the Daughters of Charity, while Sister Regina returned home after the War to care for their ailing mother.  In 1947, she returned to the Community to complete Seminary.   

Sister Regina Lindner in WAVES uniform, circa 1943

Sister Margaret Albert Scholl

Sr. Margaret Albert began her career in the U.S. Public Health Service, but very quickly enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard Medics in 1944.  The Coast Guard at this time was patrolling the Atlantic and guarding the homefront in the event of a possible invasion of the East Coast.  At the same time, based at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, she trained other paramedics for service in distant theaters of the War.  Her service lasted from 1944 to 1951, and she joined the Daughters of Charity immediately thereafter.

Sister Margaret Albert Schroll receiving award from U.S. Coast Guard Officer on deck of the 'USCGC Eagle' in 1976
Receiving a gift from USCGC Eagle in 1976

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October 7, 2025 · 9:40 am

Sister Elaine Wheeler’s Notebooks

This post is in celebration of Archives Month 2025.  American Archives Month is celebrated every October and is meant as a time for archivists to advocate for themselves, their profession, and for the importance of historical records and documentation as a mechanism of organization, shared history, and accountability.

When we give special tours to visitors, we will sometimes pull out a few special items from the collections that we think will impress them.  When other archivists visit, it becomes harder to impress.  We could pull out, say, a Christmas card from Teddy Roosevelt, but they would respond with something like, “So what, we all have something like this.”

Something that we can pull out to impress are Sister Elaine Wheeler’s notebooks.

Sister Elaine Wheeler's notebooks

In 1978, Sister Elaine was temporarily on mission in St. Louis, taking a course on Spirituality and Scripture Study, when she received a call from Sister Mary Basil Roarke, Visitatrix of the former Northeast Province at the time.  Sister Mary Basil asked her to “spend six months to a year setting up the archives for the Northeast Province [her home province in Albany, NY]?”  As a Daughter of Charity does, Sister Elaine accepted the ministry and then apparently said to herself, “You idiot, you don’t know a thing about archives.”

But, taking Sister Mary Basil’s advice to visit archives and take some workshops, she called upon her oldest sister, Sister Mary Cecelia Wheeler, archivist for the Religious Sisters of the Sacred Heart, conveniently also located in St. Louis.  Sister Mary Cecelia gave Sister Elaine her first lesson on archives, a lesson that Sister Elaine would pass on to many others – that there is the theoretical and the perfect in the archives, which is something to attain to, and that there is the practical and the real.

The five Wheeler Sisters
The five Wheeler Sisters: Sisters Elaine, Madeleine, Mary Cecilia (R.C.S.J.), Zoe, and Jean Marie

By Sister Elaine’s tally, she visited 17 repositories, took 16 workshops, and attended the Society of American Archivists conference 21 times over her 26 years as Archivist.  Her notebooks document not only her research, but a chapter of archival history in the late 1970s and early 1980s when communities of women religious began to establish formal archives for their communities and for outsiders. 

Sister Elaine Wheeler's description of what an archivist is and is not
What an Archivist is and is not, according to Sister Elaine

At the time, there were five provinces of the Daughters of Charity in the United States.  Not only did Sister Elaine help establish the archive for her home province, but she also worked with the other four provinces (the Southeast in Emmitsburg, MD; the East Central in Evansville, IN; the West Central in St. Louis, MO; and the West in Los Altos, CA) to help set up their own archives, establishing cataloging guidelines and starting an oral history project for sisters in the Northeast.  The archives of the different provinces met routinely for many years. Her work continues to exert influence on us here in Emmitsburg every single day!

Draft of Sister Elaine's acquisition policy
Draft of Sister Elaine’s acquisition guidelines

In addition to the Daughters’ collections, Sister Elaine took what she learned and applied it elsewhere.  She traveled to different hospitals under the Daughters’ orbit – usually the ministries that created the largest amounts of records – and provided workshops to ensure that the hospitals themselves were keeping records accurately to better administer patient care. 

Sister Elaine's diagram of religious archives
The world of religious archives, according to Sister Elaine

The reason that these notebooks remain a fascination to other archivists is because they reflect the same training that we all went through.  Sister Elaine learned about what an archival facility ideally would look like, how to determine what to accession and add to the collections, the importance of weeding collections to preserve space, and the necessity of good policies and procedures to ensure privacy where appropriate and yet still make the materials available.  Certainly, Sister Elaine’s training was a little less dependent on computer systems than ours today, but we still see the makings of all of our mentors and mentees in the field, and can see the place of Sisters going forth into the world reflected in the ministry of the Archives!

Sister Elaine Wheeler at her desk in the Archives
Sister Elaine processing in her office in 1990. You can see the steps in the archival process on her board behind her.

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November 25, 2024 · 11:21 am

My archivist internship experience with the Daughters of Charity

This is a guest post by Andrew Cogswell, Mount St. Mary’s Class of 2025.

I recently completed a six-week internship with the Daughters of Charity Provincial Archives. Initially, I was introduced to the staff, some sisters, the general history of the Daughters of Charity, and learned what my tasks would be. My first project was compiling clippings of newspaper articles regarding the work of Daughters of Charity from 1998 to 2011 in Indiana. These articles were originally collected by staff at the Evansville campus and document the  sisters’ contributions in Indiana. Here I spent many hours cutting out articles, reading them, and putting them in folders based off their connection to the Daughters of Charity at their ministries in the area.

Tools and setup for my Newspaper project

This was only one of a few projects. My next main job was assisting with re-appraisal of artifacts that arrived when the current province was created. This specific task was quite fun, as I got to  see what lies within these cases of artifacts and learn about the material culture of the Daughters. In this project, I got to see what sisters deemed as important, including many relics of saints (Mostly St Vincent de Paul, St Louise de Marillac, and St Elizabeth Anne Seton.), and even artwork made by the sisters. Additionally, being able to catalog and appraise these artifacts feeds into my interest of museums and how they gather artifacts for display and preservation.

My next major task was transcribing an oral history interview from Sister Sandra Goldsborough. While the video of her interview was important, the transcription helps to make the interview far more usable for researchers in the future. While the transcription process took quite a few hours for a hour-long interview, it really showed at the heart what the Daughters of Charity is. Through the many trials and hardships Sr. Sandra faced, she never faltered on her duty or love to God. For her a challenge was just part of the condition of life that she was grateful for. Which being able to listen to this interview, showed me how true to her order and to Christ she really was.

Sister Sandra circa 1963 and in 2011

While in this internship I dealt with a few different types of archival work, I found a much greater reason in it all. Seeing the work of the Daughters of Charity in Evansville, viewing the artifacts they left behind, and listening to Sr. Sandra’s interview, I have come to the conclusion that these sisters truly live out their motto. Their motto being, “The Charity of Jesus Crucified Urges Us,” is clearly reflected in everything I saw, confirming their deep love for Christ and for others. That through massive changes in all their lives and the differences the church has gone through, they have not changed their core principles one bit. Each and every sister truly is a disciple of Christ and are truly an example of holiness. If anyone wants to learn about the archival world, see some cool artifacts, and more importantly learn about the Daughters of Charity’s impact, this is a great experience one should not pass up.

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