The Civil War: The Sisters Go to the Hospitals

1861–1867

The governor's request. On 21 October 1861 Governor Oliver P. Morton of Indiana addressed a request to Father Sorin for sisters to nurse the Union wounded. The next day Mother Angela and six other sisters departed for Cairo, Illinois — seven sisters in the first party, none of them trained nurses — and Mother Angela's conference with General Grant at Cairo is dated 24 October 1861 in the congregation's chronology. Grant assigned them to the military hospital at Paducah, Kentucky. The Indiana Historical Bureau's marker on the South Bend ground states the course in its text: in 1861 Mother Angela Gillespie, responding to Governor Morton's request, sent sisters to care for wounded soldiers in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, and she and the sisters who served received the gratitude of the federal government and of the soldiers.

How many sisters served — the record disagrees. The marker's text says eighty sisters served under Mother Angela. Ella Loraine Dorsey's and Anna Shannon McAllister's Nuns of the Battlefield tradition, carried in Ellen Ryan Jolly's account, says more than eighty served while the War Department recorded only sixty-three. The Navy's own Bureau of Medicine and Surgery history says at least sixty-five of the community's one hundred and sixty sisters served; a diocesan account says approximately eighty of one hundred and sixty. The figures stand unreconciled, as printed. The stations named across the record are Paducah and Louisville in Kentucky, Cairo and Mound City in Illinois, Memphis in Tennessee, St. Louis in Missouri, and Washington, D.C.; the Historical Bureau's 2013 review of the marker text warns that primary sources are lacking for some of the hospital claims, and the warning stands with the claims. Two sisters boarded the Navy hospital ship Red Rover on 24 December 1862 and served aboard continuously until her decommissioning in November 1865.

The Navy claim, with its caveat. The sisters are called the forerunners of the Navy Nurse Corps in the Navy's own 150th-anniversary acknowledgment of them, and the first paid women employees of the United States Navy in diocesan telling. The Historical Bureau's marker review prints the caution at the same size: the Navy Nurse Corps Association and the Navy's own commemoration make no such mention, and the companion claim that the Red Rover was the Navy's first hospital ship cannot be substantiated from the records the review reached. Both the honor and the caution are the documented record, and both print.

What the war built. The nursing founded the congregation's health-care ministry: in 1867 the sisters opened their first hospital, Saint Mary's Infirmary at Cairo, Illinois. And the war's wages stand in the motherhouse's own bricks. The sisters' archives carry Bertrand Hall — the five-story academy building of 1860–62 — as funded by monies the sisters made from caring for wounded Civil War soldiers, and the first interest payment on the 1888 Tower Building debt, of which Notre Dame assumed two-thirds, as consisting of the salaries of the Civil War nurses. In Our Lady of Peace Cemetery on the motherhouse ground, flags mark the graves of the sister-nurses to this day.

Sources

1. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.1965.1, "Sisters of the Holy Cross," marker text and Marker Text Review Report (2013) — Governor Morton's request, the eighty sisters of the marker text, the stations, and the review's caveats on the Navy claims.
2. Sister Mary Denis Makel, C.S.C., "Angel of the Battlefield: Mother M. Angela Gillespie," The Grog Ration, vol. 3 (Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, U.S. Navy, 2008) — at least sixty-five of one hundred and sixty sisters; the Navy's acknowledgment.
3. Today's Catholic, "Holy Cross nursing began with the Civil War" (Lavonis) — the departure of 22 October 1861, the seven of the first party, approximately eighty of one hundred and sixty.
4. HARC, Archival Reference Guide — the Grant conference at Cairo, 24 October 1861; the Red Rover boarding, 24 December 1862; Bertrand Hall funded by the nurses' earnings; the Tower Building interest paid from the nurses' salaries.
5. Sisters of the Holy Cross, "History" (cscsisters.org) — Saint Mary's Infirmary, Cairo, 1867, the congregation's first hospital.
6. Saint Mary's College, Avenues (Summer 2025) — the flags on the sister-nurses' graves in Our Lady of Peace Cemetery.