USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume II > Part 15
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They own and operate the famous Kneipp Sanitarium at Rome City, Ind .; own the Maria Joseph home for Aged at Salem Heights, near Dayton; a boarding school at Minster, Ohio for orphaned girls; the Pilgrim House at Frank, Ohio. They are in charge of St. Joseph's orphanage at Dayton, Ohio; of the domestic work at the archepiscopal residence of Archbishop McNicholas in Norwood, a suburb of Cincinnati, and of the Fenwick Club in Cincinnati. They also have charge of the domestic work in five seminaries, including St. Charles' Borromeo Seminary of the Precious Blood Fathers at Carthage, Ohio, and the Brunnerdale Preparatory Seminary at Brunnerdale, near Canton, Ohio.
For more than 60 years they have taught in the public schools in seven counties of Ohio and are on the faculty of the Athenaeum of Ohio, located at Cincinnati. Some of their Sisters who have taught on the public school faculty have since been retired on pension. All teachers hold state certificates and a great many of them have life certificates.
The motherhouse, once Castle Loewenberg in Switzerland, a gift to Father Brunner from Count Henry von Mont, was sold in 1850 and the Swiss convent was closed. Members there journeyed to America and joined the Sisters at Maria Stein, Ohio, where the motherhouse had been located since 1846. In 1923 another site at Salem Heights near Dayton, Ohio, was purchased and this is now the site of the motherhouse and novitiate.
Since its beginning nearly 100 years ago, nearly 1,800 women have en- rolled in this religious community. They number today more than 800 religious.
In 1933, steps were taken to exhume the body of their foundress, Maria Anna Brunner, who had died in 1836 and was buried near Castle Loewenberg.
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The body was brought to America and rests in a shrine to the left of the large chapel of Perpetual Adoration at the motherhouse at Salem Heights.
According to the convent records, "every bone of the body was well preserved ; the hands were perfect, still folded and covered with flesh and skin, with finger nails attached."
CONGREGATION OF THE SISTERS, SERVANTS OF THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY
An almost century old religious community which saw its beginning close to Ohio's borders in Monroe, Mich., in 1845 has extended its influence into Ohio and its members today, some 50 of them, are engaged in three Ohio schools, located in Akron, Canton and Lorain, all in the diocese of Cleveland. They staff elementary and high schools in these cities.
From a log cabin convent beginning in Monroe, Mich., with a membership of four Sisters, the congregation now numbers 917 professed Sisters, 64 novices and 32 postulants.
Father Louis Florent Gillet, a Redemptorist missionary engaged in mission work in Southern Michigan, founded this religious community of women to assist him in educational work.
Many Ohio girls have been educated in St. Mary's academy and boarding school in Monroe, Mich., and in Marygrove College, Detroit, Mich.
SISTERS OF THE INCARNATE WORD
Cleveland, Ohio shelters one religious community, the Sisters of the In- carnate Word, whose members in its 350 years' history have suffered exile from two countries, from France during the French Revolution and more recently from Mexico, during the Religious persecution there.
Exiles from the Mexican convents came to Cleveland in 1927 at the invitation of Archbishop Joseph Schrembs. Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine extended hospitality until a temporary convent home could be procured.
Within three years, on March 4, 1930, their permanent motherhouse was established at 6618 Pearl Rd., Parma Heights, and from 1930 until 1935 when a novitiatite was established until 1935, the community grew from seven members to 35. Their present number in Ohio is 57.
They teach in two schools. Immaculate Conception School, Wellsville, Ohio, and St. Anthony-St. Bridget School, Cleveland, Ohio. In addition they conduct a day school for boys and girls at their convent site in Parma Heights.
In 1935 a disastrous fire almost wiped out the convent. The Sisters sought shelter in a barn on the convent property. The fire occurred at 5 a.m. on a cold January morning. News of it had no sooner reached Cleveland than many offers of help came to them. The Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine were again their benefactors, having been the first to arrive on the scene with
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conveyances to transport the Sisters to the various convents of the Sisters of Charity in Cleveland.
In the meantime the Carmelite Sisters had moved from their convent at 11127 St. Clair St., to a larger convent in Cleveland Heights, and the Incarnate Word Sisters were transferred to the Carmelite convent. The Parma convent was rebuilt. The St. Clair convent is now a center for edu- cational and religious activities for the Sisters.
SISTERS OF THE HOLY HUMILITY OF MARY
In New Bedford, Pa., a small farming village on the border line of Ohio and Pennsylvania, is located a religious community of nuns, who have served 75 years in the diocese of Cleveland. Although their property is located in Pennsylvania, just across the state line of Ohio, it has always been regarded as an Ohio community, first by reason of the fact that it was an Ohio bishop, Bishop Rappe, the first bishop of Cleveland, who gave these exiled Sisters from France a place of refuge, and again because it is in the various cities of Ohio that the Sisters have rendered their greatest service in education and in hospitalization and social welfare.
It is the community known as the Sisters of the Holy Humility of Mary, but one which is more familiarly known as the "Blue Nuns," from the color of their religious habit.
Prior to 1845 there was no Catholic Church in the territory between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. William Murrin, a well-to-do-farmer of New Bedford, in 1846 built a log cabin chapel on his farm, and also a log-cabin house for Father Reid of Pittsburgh, who was assigned as a permanent pastor. In 1855 Mr. Murrin deeded his farm of 250 acres to Bishop O'Connor of Pittsburgh to be used for church purposes. However, Bishop O'Connor insisted that 100 acres of this and the farm house be retained by Mr. Murrin during his life time. A two story brick house was built by Bishop O'Connor for the purpose of a seminary, but the distance from the nearest railroad station was so great and transportation facilities of that day so inadequate, that the seminary plan had to be abandoned. A Franciscan order of men took charge. The ground was considered unproductive and they abandoned it, as it was neither suitable for school purposes or farming purposes-or so they thought.
The Bishop of Pittsburgh must have concluded that he had a "white elephant" on his hands, so deeded it to Bishop Rappe of the Cleveland diocese for the sum of $3,000-just the cost of the two story brick seminary, which had been built upon the land. This was about 1859.
Bishop Rappe decided to use it as an orphanage site for the orphaned and dependent boys of the diocese, and placed the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine in charge. They had come to Cleveland in 1851 from France.
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These Sisters carried on for four years and in 1863 they too abandoned it- not so much because of disheartenment or discouragement, but because Bishop Rappe needed Sisters to staff the first hospital that was then being established in the present area of Cleveland.
The hospital is known today as St. Vincent's Charity Hospital. Mean- while in Donmartin, France in 1854, the pastor of the village, Rev. J. J. Begel, was greatly alarmed at the lack of educational facilities for the poor children of the village. One of his parishioners, a woman of wealth, Mlle. Antoinette Potier, offered the use of her home, and the means to defray ordinary ex- penses. He engaged a teacher who made her home with Mlle. Potier and a year later in 1855 Mlle. Potier, her housekeeper and the teacher, asked per- mission to form a religious community, and to be given a religious rule. Their request was granted.
Napoleon III and the French Revolution changed the course of events for this young religious community. Father Begel in his public denouncement of Napoleon's oppression of the Church won the ill favor of the government. He escaped personal punishment but the new sisterhood of which he was the founder was subjected to many annoyances, such as being refused teaching certificates, despite possession of necessary qualifications.
Father Louis Hoffer, a French missionary who was pastor at Louisville, Ohio, was in France to engage teachers for his parish school. He consulted Father Begel, who agreed to send his small group to America, should the necessary invitation come from Bishop Rappe. No time was lost in securing this invitation.
On the eve of sailing to America, their foundress and benefactress, Mlle. Potier, known in religion as Mother Magdalene, died. Father Begel piloted the disconsolate group to America, arriving in New York, May 30, 1864 and in the diocese of Cleveland early in June.
They were directed to the thrice abandoned Murrin farm at New Bedford, as the site from which their activities in the diocese were to be directed. They had become accustomed to extreme poverty in their native France, because of their own choice they chose to serve the poor, but the sight which met their eyes at New Bedford filled them with dismay. The land was in a wild state, undrained, overgrown with brush, where it was not densely covered with woods and dotted with sloughs. The land surrounding the building was a marsh studded with stumps.
Today that site of 250 acres is one of the most picturesque spots in the entire diocese. Woman's labor, not man's, converted the marshy swamp into a well drained, well cultivated, and well landscaped estate. When a decade ago, it became necessary to partly rebuild the convent home because of a disastrous fire, the wood beams of solid oak were found to be in perfect con- dition. The beams of oak and walnut, it was revealed, came from the woods that abounded on the farm. In the clearing of the forests, the Sisters them-
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selves did the work, they felled the trees, hewed the logs, and dragged them by chains to the site where their first and only convent still stands. They baked the bricks in their own home made kilns-these women who in their native France had been unused to any type of manual labor. They sheared the sheep, and wove the wool into material for garments for their own use and for the orphans in their care. They set up their own shoe shop, making and repairing shoes.
There still lives at the motherhouse a Sister, Mother M. Genevieve, one time superior, who as a music pupil nearly 70 years ago, heard the story of the pioneer days from the first superioress in America, Mother Anna. Mother Anna, as Maria Tabourat, a daughter of a French colonel, had joined the community in France.
A Mrs. Martin Clark of Youngstown, Ohio journeyed to New Bedford to instruct the Sisters in the English tongue, as their ignorance of the lan- guage made it difficult for them to engage in school work. Ursuline nuns of Cleveland took another of their members into their convent for a year to instruct her in English. The Ursulines of Cleveland and the Ladies of the Sacred Heart secured orders for fine needlework and sewing as a means of pro- viding a livelihood for the Sisters and their orphan charges.
All of these hardships have become a matter of tradition to this religious community, which from the original band of four in France and 20 in the first American foundation has now 386 members.
With the building of the Nypano railroad in nearby Youngstown, Irish immigrants who found employment on the railroad, journeyed to New Bed- ford when in need of medical care. Of necessity a small building had to be erected to hospitalize these emergency cases. This is said to have been the first hospital within the present area of Youngstown. It continued to serve the nearby farming community until the erection of St. Elizabeth's hospital in Youngstown about 26 years ago.
Today the Sisters own and staff three hospitals, St. Elizabeth's, Youngs- town; St. Joseph's at Warren, Ohio and St. Joseph's at Lorain, Ohio. They conduct three academies, St. Joseph's academy at the motherhouse, Mount Marie academy, Canton and Lourdes academy, Cleveland. They teach in 26 parish schools in the Cleveland diocese.
They conduct the Rosemary Home for Crippled Children in Euclid, Ohio. This home was once the family residence of the Caesar Grasselli family. Mrs. Grasselli was an invalid for many years. Upon her death Mr. Grasselli gave the home and the grounds to Bishop Joseph Schrembs, to be put to some use for the benefit of suffering humanity, in memory of his wife.
Just at that time, an abandoned baby found upon an ash' pile in Youngs- town had been taken to St. Elizabeth's hospital for care. She was found to be badly crippled. She was tenderly cared for, and when the Rosemary home in Cleveland was opened in 1922 as a hospice for crippled children, this
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abandoned baby, who was called Rosemary, was its first patient. She is now a young woman, well able to make her own way in the world.
Assisting the Sisters in directing the work at Rosemary Home is a group of men and women named the Johanna Grasselli Guild in memory of Mrs. Grasselli.
Members of the Grasselli family continue their interest in the home in memory of their parents.
SISTERS OF CHARITY OF ST. AUGUSTINE
Joyously looking forward to the completion of their first century of service in America, all of which has been rendered in Ohio and in cities of the diocese of Cleveland, are the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine. This religious community has already stored up 88 years of glorious history since their first four members came to Cleveland in 1851.
Mother Bernardine, superior of their convent in Boulogne-sur-mer, and experienced in hospital management, with three companions, came to Cleve- land in response to the appeal of Bishop Rappe for nursing Sisters to care for the sick.
This religious order has a heritage that goes back to the year 1223, as it claims to be a branch of the Augustinian Sisters organized in Arras, France. at that time. Its French foundation was forced to close during the French revolution only to be reorganized again again with the cessation of hostilities.
Sister Francoise, a professed Sister and two postulants, Louise Brulois and Cornelie Museler, accompanied Mother Bernardine to Cleveland. Ursu- line Nuns who had come from Boulogne-sur-mer a year before, extended them hospitality until their own convent, a humble dwelling on Monroe St .. on the West Side of Cleveland, became available.
From this center the Sisters visited the homes, caring for the sick and soliciting funds for the building of a hospital. In August, 1852, less than a year after their arrival in Cleveland their new hospital, named St. Joseph's, was opened and received its first patient. It was the first public hospital, other than a government hospital, in Cleveland and it continued its service until 1865, when the present St. Vincent's Charity Hospital, on E. 22nd St., was erected from funds received by public subscription. Soldiers returning from the Civil war and passing through Cleveland were denied hospitaliza- tion because of lack of facilities. In 1863 Bishop Rappe made a public appeal that if funds were provided for the erection of a suitable hospital, he would provide the Nursing Sisters.
St. Vincent's orphanage on Monroe St., was the next venture of the Sisters, which was opened in 1852 by Bishop Rappe. Meanwhile Mother Bernardine and Sister Francoise returned to France, and Mother Ursula, whom is Catherine Bisonnette from near Sandusky, Ohio, was placed in charge of St. Vincent's, became the first American superioress of the Sisters of Charity.
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Father Louis De Goesbriand, who as chancellor of the diocese of Cleve- land had escorted the French Sisters to Cleveland, and during their 14 days sea voyage was their teacher, instructing them in English, wrote in his remini- scences concerning Mother Ursula-he was stationed at Sandusky at the time of the cholera epidemic and she was a member of his parish-"There is another name which I desire to mention. It is that of Miss C. Bisonnette of La Prarie. who became Mother Ursula, the first superioress of the St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum now on Monroe St., and who died Sept. 11, 1863. During the cholera which did so much havoc in Sandusky City, many Catholic children had lost both their parents and some poor widows were left in the greatest distress. At my request this courageous young girl, whose labors at La Prarie toward the instruction of children I knew, came at once to Sandusky City, at a time when all who could had fled. We made her take possession of a good house which had been deserted. Furniture was obtained by entering a steam boat which lay deserted in the bay. Thus this devoted soul managed to provide for the wants of orphans and parents till the terrible scourge had passed away. Her vocation to a religious life was undoubtedly the reward for her generosity in offering her life for the sake of the orphans. I know of few persons for whom nature and divine grace has done so much as for the ven- erable Mother Ursula."
In the archives of the Ursuline convent in Cleveland is the record of the first religious profession ceremonies for the Ursuline Nuns in Cleveland and on Dec. 28, 1852, Miss Catherine Bisonnette was clothed in the religious habit of the Ursulines and was given the name of Sister St. Ursula in honor of the patronness of the order of Ursulines. She had enrolled with the Ursu- lines on Oct. 15, 1850. Prior to her profession as an Ursuline nun, Bishop Rappe had requested of her that following her profession, she give up her Ursuline vocation in order to take charge of St. Joseph's hospital and St. Vincent's Orphan asylum both of which were in charge of the Sisters of Charity. In obedience to the wishes of her Bishop, she left her Ursuline convent at 3 p. m. the day of her profession, to take charge of the hospital and orphanage and to become the first American superior of the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine.
It was a sacrifice on the part of the Ursulines to relinquish their first American postulant and it was an equally great sacrifice on the part of Mother Ursula to tear herself away from her associates whom she had come to know during her two years in the novitiate. It only serves to prove the life of renunciation of a nun-"Not my Will, but Thine be done," are the words that inspire the Catholic sisterhoods to relinquish all things of the world and to dedicate themselves-their whole being, to His service.
Among the early novices to be welcomed by the Sisters of Charity in Cleveland were Ellen and Margaret Woods, of Youngstown, Ohio, daughters of Mary Shehy Woods, whose father, Daniel Shehy, settled in Youngstown,
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Ohio in 1796. It was in Mrs. Woods log cabin home that Mass was first offered in the present area of Youngstown and continued to be offered there on the occasions when Bishop Fenwick and other missionary priests came through the town.
For many years care of the sick and the orphans was the chief work of the Sisters of Charity. In later years however they have extended their service into the educational field. They conduct St. Augustine's academy and day school at their motherhouse in Lakewood. Ohio, and teach parish schools of the diocese. The Lakewood site was purchased in 1885.
St. Vincent's orphanage has been enlarged and transferred to a large acreage west of Cleveland, known as Parmadale, or "The Children's Village." It operates on the cottage plan. Some 40 children, graded according to ages found in the normal home, are cared for in each of the 12 cottages. There is a community school, a church, and playgrounds in the Children's Village.
St. Ann's Maternity Hospital and home for unwed mothers was opened in Cleveland in 1873; Mercy Hospital, Canton, in 1908; St. John's Hospital, Cleveland,in 1916; St. Thomas' Hospital, Akron, 1928 and in 1938, their first mission outside of the diocese of Cleveland was opened in Columbia, S. C .. when Providence Hospital was established.
The work of the Sisters of Charity quickly appealed to the citizens of Cleveland and the cities surrounding it. As early as 1865, the hand carved altar of exquisite workmanship, which adorned the chapel in the first wing of the present St. Vincent's charity Hospital was the gift of Catherine Loftus Cummins, a woman who worked as a servant in the homes of the wealthy of Cleveland. This altar is still in use in the chapel at the Forest View farm home of the Sisters, located in Elyria, Ohio. This farm of 300 acres, between Elyria and Oberlin, was a gift to the Sisters in 1930 from Josephine Maher and her husband, Thomas K. Maher of Cleveland.
Catherine Cummins spent all her earnings in providing altars and sacred vessels and vestments for chapels and churches in Cleveland. She died in the home of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Cleveland in 1892. A modest tomb- stone marks her last resting place in Calvary Cemetery, Cleveland, the gift of the Sisters of Charity and the Rev. William McMahon and Msgr. T. P. Thorpe, whose parishes, St. Bridget's and Immaculate Conception. benefitted by Catherine Cummins' generosity.
Mrs. Rosa Klorer of Canton, Ohio, whose death occurred in 1938, and who spent the last years of her life in Mercy hospital, Canton, under the kindly care of the Sisters of Charity, was a generous benefactor to Mercy hospital. She was honored by Pope Pius XI with the Gold Cross Pro Ecclesiae et Pontifice in recognition of her generous gifts to Mercy hospital and to other charitable enterprises of the diocese.
With the opening of St. Vincent's Charity hospital Oct. 10, 1865. made necessary because of the growth of the city which now numbered a population
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of 50,000, and the additional needs of the returning soldiers from the Civil War, the chief of staff, Dr. Gustave C. E. Weber, retired surgeon general of the U. S. Army opened Charity Hospital Medical school. In 1881 this medical school merged with the Cleveland Medical College to form the present flour- ishing Medical School of Western Reserve University.
The first patients to be admitted to the new St. Vincent's charity hospital were wounded soldiers from the Civil War battlefields.
St. Vincent's hospital still continues to serve in the down town area of Cleveland on the site purchased in 1865. A nurses home, new wings to the old buildings, and equipment to meet new developments in hospital science brings the appraised value of this property to the sum of $2,113,916.
St. Ann's Maternity hospital and equipment is valued at $275,329 and St. John's hospital, Cleveland, at $747,148.
Many of their Sisters have specialized in pharmacy, laboratory technic, medical social work, X-ray and social service, hospital administration in addi- tion to those who are specially trained in Pedagogy, and in the arts and sciences.
The first two nuns to become registered pharmacists in Ohio were Sisters of Charity of Cleveland. According to the Midland Druggist Magazine, pub- lished in 1901, "Neither of them had ever attended a school of pharmacy, nor had they been employed in a retail drug store. But they had studied phar- macy for several years and obtained their practical experience in the phar- macy connected with the hospital."
The Sisters conduct outpatient and social service departments in St. Vin- cent's, St. Ann's and St. John's hospital and have nurses training schools in connection with all of their hospitals in Ohio.
They number 300 members.
URSULINE NUNS
Ursuline Nuns came to Ohio in 1845 and located at St. Martin's, Ohio, in Brown County. They were not the first nuns to come to Ohio, but they can claim the distinction of being first in many other adventures which have left their mark indelibly on the history of Ohio and of civilization.
Their sainted foundress, St. Angela de Merici, raised to the rank of Sainthood by Pope Pius IX, was claimed by him to have been "the first apostle of female education," as she set up in Brescia, Italy in 1535, the first school which was to be exclusively for the education of young girls.
She attributed the breakdown of society of that time to the lack of Christian mothers. Italy had many schools for the training of young men, but none of a monastic type for girls and it was to meet this need that Angela, a well educated and well traveled girl of wealth. formed a religious community with other women, and began immediately a school exclusively for the educa- tion of young girls.
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She died five years after she had founded this Religious Congregation, but within those years she builded so well her Religious Institute that it has survived persecution and dispersement of its members-an Institute which has attracted thousands of young women of many nationalities, many of whom imposed self-exile upon themselves, that they might follow in Angela's foot- steps.
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