The sisters as a workforce: thirty-two years of nursing, a hospital, a nursing school, and the motherhouse on Dragoon Trail

1851 – the present

The Poor Handmaids' thirty-two years: the largest sustained body of women's labor in Mishawaka's nineteenth-century record wore a habit. The Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, founded at Dernbach, Germany, in 1851 by Maria Katharina Kasper, sent three sisters to Mishawaka, who arrived on 25 October 1878 and settled at St. Agnes Convent, at Fourth and Spring Streets. The names of the three are not carried in any record this build has reached — the gap is named in the Founders and Hospitals sections as well, and the settling source is the congregation's province archive at the University of Notre Dame Archives, with the house annals behind it. What the three began was nursing without an institution: for thirty-two years the sisters nursed the sick poor in their homes across the town, and took the worst cases into the convent itself. The hospital came only when the home nursing had outgrown a convent's rooms: St. Joseph Hospital opened on 19 April 1910, at 215 West Fourth Street, with forty beds. One conflict in the founding date prints whole: the diocesan paper, Today's Catholic, in its issue of 21 April 2015, prints in one sentence that the sisters' work began "starting at St. Agnes in 1871," while framing the arrival in 1878 in another; the dated records support 1878, and the 1871 variant stands printed, unreconciled.

The sisters in the schools and the parish: the congregation's Mishawaka presence ran from 1880 to 2006 at St. Joseph Parish and its school, and its sisters taught across the city's Catholic schools — St. Bavo, St. Monica, Queen of Peace, Marian High School, and the combined Mishawaka Catholic school. The teaching was a workforce in the plain sense: generations of Mishawaka children, Catholic and in the parish schools' reach beyond, were taught by women whose names the school records mostly do not keep. The record reached names them individually only at its edges — Sister Pauline Bridegroom, for one, whose ministry at Joseph House, the city's home for men in recovery, is carried in her congregation's jubilee record. Congregations' own histories stand in this build's Religion and Hospitals sections; what is synthesized here is the labor: nursing, teaching, and administration, performed by women under vows, as one of the city's standing workforces for a century and a quarter.

The nursing school: the sisters converted that labor into a profession's training. The St. Joseph Training School for Nurses was begun in 1919 by Sister Columba, and its first class graduated in 1922. The state's own directory, preserved through Indiana Memory, catches the school in its working years: director Sister Mary Assumpta, a registered nurse; sixty students enrolled; a daily patient census of ninety-two — a school of sixty women in training inside a forty-bed hospital's grown successor institution. The school's closing is not recorded in any source reached, and the school does not appear among the eleven closed-school record sets held by the Indiana Archives; its end stands as a named gap, with the hospital's own archives and the state board of nursing's records as the settling sources.

The Franciscan motherhouse: the second congregation arrived later and larger in footprint, though its Mishawaka work was of a different kind. The Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration were founded at Olpe, Germany, by Mother Maria Theresia Bonzel; the congregation is dated 20 July 1863, and its American foundation was made at Lafayette, Indiana, on 14 December 1875 by six sisters. The motherhouse moved to Mishawaka in 1943 — Mount Alverno, at 1515 West Dragoon Trail — and the perpetual adoration the sisters maintain has continued without interruption since Easter of that year. Their documented Mishawaka work was teaching and administration: they donated the thirty-six and more acres on which Marian High School rose and staffed its girls' department from the school's opening in September 1964; the first teachers of Queen of Peace school, in 1958, were of the congregation. In 1986 the health system the sisters sponsor moved its offices onto the motherhouse grounds — the Franciscan Alliance headquarters, twelve hospitals and more than 18,000 employees in the system's own published figures — so that the largest health system administered from Mishawaka is administered from a women's religious house. The limit prints with it, as the Charities section's tested near-negative: no charitable institution of the Franciscan sisters' own appears in Mishawaka in the record reached — their hospitals stand in other cities and their Mishawaka school was the diocese's — and the city's religious charity belongs overwhelmingly to the Poor Handmaids. The Franciscan house's Mishawaka work, at the record's strength, is prayer, teaching, and administration; the Poor Handmaids' was nursing and the hospital it built.

Sources:

1. This build's Hospitals, Religion, and Charities sections — the arrival of 25 October 1878, St. Agnes Convent, the thirty-two years of home nursing, St. Joseph Hospital's opening of 19 April 1910 at 215 West Fourth Street with forty beds, the parish and school presence of 1880–2006, the teaching roster of schools, and the three sisters' names as a named gap with the University of Notre Dame Archives named as the settling source.
2. Today's Catholic, 21 April 2015 — the "starting at St. Agnes in 1871" sentence, printed against the same article's 1878 framing; the dated records support 1878 and the variant stands.
3. Indiana Memory, state directory of nursing schools — the St. Joseph Training School for Nurses: begun 1919 by Sister Columba, first class graduated 1922, director Sister Mary Assumpta, R.N., sixty students enrolled, daily patient census ninety-two; the Indiana Archives' closed-school holdings checked — the school is not among the eleven sets.
4. Franciscan Alliance and congregational publications — Mother Maria Theresia Bonzel and Olpe, the congregation dated 20 July 1863, the Lafayette foundation of 14 December 1875, the motherhouse removal to Mishawaka in 1943, the adoration continuous since Easter 1943, the Marian land gift and girls'-department staffing from September 1964, Queen of Peace's first teachers of 1958, and the system's own figures of twelve hospitals and more than 18,000 employees.