The women and the nurses

1861 – 1945

The Civil War nursing is the county's glory and the motherhouse towns' story: Eighty Sisters of the Holy Cross answered Governor Morton's call of October 1861 under Mother Angela and served as military nurses, becoming the forerunners of the Navy Nurse Corps aboard the Red Rover in 1862 — the words of the state marker that stands today on the hospital ground in Mishawaka, whither the marker was moved with the hospital system from its first dedication at South Bend in October 1965. The nursing itself belongs to the Notre Dame motherhouse's story, carried in South Bend's record; the marker's presence in Mishawaka is a relic of the hospitals' later union, and is printed at that strength. Mishawaka's own motherhouse — the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration on Dragoon Trail — came to the town in 1943, and its sisters' service is the Religion section's; the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, who nursed in Mishawaka from 1878 and kept St. Joseph's Hospital from its opening in 1910, likewise stand in the Religion section's telling, and both are pointed to here, not retold.

The negatives, at roll strength: The Gold Star roll of 1921 prints no woman among Mishawaka's twelve dead of the First World War, though it carries fifteen women of Indiana in its pages. For the Second World War, no Mishawaka servicewoman or Army nurse is named in any roll — a statement about the record reached, printed as such. The town's women served, as nurses, as WACs and WAVES, and in the offices and wards of the town's own hospitals, and Ball Band's victory shift was more than half women by 1943; the rolls that would name the town's uniformed women — the Indiana Archives' service cards, the county veterans index's women's entries, the library's service files — are the settling sources named in the gaps, and this article prints the negative rather than a borrowed name.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Bureau marker, Sisters of the Holy Cross (the 1861 call, the eighty sisters, the Red Rover), with its relocation history as recorded in the Historical Marker Database (dedicated at South Bend, October 1965; later moved).
2. Indiana Historical Commission, Gold Star Honor Roll, State of Indiana (1921), the Mishawaka entries and the volume's women, counted.
3. Mishawaka Religion section file, the Poor Handmaids from 1878 and the Dragoon Trail motherhouse; Mishawaka Ball Band leg file, the 1943 labor force.