American Civil War

First published in 1927, “Nuns of the Battlefield” was written by Ellen Ryan Jolly. In this book, the author gives a description of the women religious congregations that provided medical aid during the Civil War. Many of these religious congregations…

From time to time, The Vincennes Weekly Sun ran articles on the emergency hospital in that city. Much of the praise for this medical facility was directed toward Sisters St. Felix Buchanan and Sophie Glenn and Dr. Baty, who was…

In addition to their work at the Military Hospital in Indianapolis, the Sisters of Providence also had charge of the emergency hospital in Vincennes, Ind., that was opened in July and August of 1861 and then again on May 29,…

Sister St. Felix Buchanan Sister Helena Burns Sister Frances Ann Carney Sister Athanasius Fogarty Sister Sophie Glenn Sister Eugenia Gorman Sister Mary Francis Guthneck Sister Henrietta MacKenzie Sister Mary Louise Malone Sister Mary Rose O’Donaghue Sister Matilda Swinley Sisters Mary…

In the Sisters of Providence Archives there is a bound transcription of the diary of General Superior Mother Mary Cecilia Bailly. She served as general superior after the death of Mother Theodore Guerin in 1856 until 1868, covering the turbulent…

Sister Athanasius Fogarty, directress of the Military Hospital in Indianapolis during the Civil War, was greatly respected as a sister-nurse. She served at the hospital from May 17, 1861, to August 1865. The necrology (obituary) in the Sisters of Providence…

Just over 20 years after the founding of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Ind., the country was torn apart by the Civil War (1861-1865). Sisters of Providence answered a call to duty by Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton.…

A report by Dr. John M. Kitchen and Dr. Patrick H. Jameson, hospital surgeons at the Military Hospital in Indianapolis, provided the following information in a report to Inspector-General Miles Murphy. The report was published by the Indianapolis Daily Journal.…

Excerpts from the Indianapolis Daily Journal, dated July 22, 1864: Hospital routine “The business of the day begins at five o’clock. At that hour the nurses busy themselves in cleaning the spittoons, washing the faces and arms of the patients,…