Black women's organizing the record allows, and the sisters' workforce at county boundary

1841–1960 · PRINTED AT THE SIZE FOUND, NO LARGER

The bound, first, because it governs everything in this article: Penn Township's Black population in the census record is thirteen residents in 1870 — the first count after none at all in 1850 and 1860 — and that count is township-including-Mishawaka. A Black women's organization needs a community of a size this township never had in the period these rows cover, and the searches run for this row — census, church and directory records — found none seated in Penn Township or Osceola: no Black women's club, church society, or suffrage branch on this ground is named in any record reached, and none is invented here. The religion record adds the same finding from the other side: Churches & Religion names no ladies' aid, missionary society or women's society of any Penn Township congregation — Black or white — in the record it reached, so the township's women's organizing of every kind runs through the county institutions of the preceding article or leaves no trace at all. The verdict is printed at exactly that size: TESTED at reached strength — no Black women's organization seated in Penn Township was found, and the population bound is printed with the negative so the negative reads as evidence, not as oversight. County-level digging into South Bend's Black women's lines (the NAACP's and the Hering House's women's work) was not completed in this run and is not asserted. The sisters, at county boundary: the largest female workforce in this county's history wore a habit. The Sisters of the Holy Cross received it first on 29 September 1841 at Le Mans, from Father Basil Moreau; four sisters reached Notre Dame in 1843; the congregation's first American establishment opened at Bertrand, Michigan, on 16 July 1844 — Saint Mary's Academy, on land and a building donated by Madeline Bertrand, a Potawatomi woman — and its first American postulants received the habit on 8 September 1844. On 15 August 1855 the sisters moved to the present Saint Mary's site west of Notre Dame, thirty sisters relocating a boarding school of sixty students under Mother M. Angela Gillespie; in the Civil War Mother Angela took seventy sisters to nurse in the hospitals at Mound City and Cairo; and the congregation's own fifty-year annals (1855–1905) count nearly a thousand sisters at work in convents, academies, parish schools, hospitals and orphan asylums. Entrants peaked in 1956–1960 — 344 in five years — and fell sharply after 1965. None of it stood on this township's ground: Churches & Religion's Catholic test found no parish seated in town or township, and no sister-staffed school, hospital or house in Penn Township was found in any record searched. The sisters are therefore this county's women's history at boundary size — the workforce that educated and nursed the county's Catholic generations, Osceola's Catholic families among their pupils and patients across the township line, and not one convent of it on Osceola ground.

Sources:

1. Population — the census bounds (no Black residents returned in Penn Township 1850–1860; 13 in 1870, township-including-Mishawaka) under which this row's test was run; the census, church and directory searches are stated in the text.
2. Churches & Religion — the congregational record of Penn Township (no women's society of any congregation named in the record reached) and the Catholic test (no parish seated in town or township), both banked.
3. Sisters of the Holy Cross, congregational record — habit first given 29 Sept. 1841 (Le Mans); four sisters at Notre Dame 1843; Bertrand establishment 16 July 1844 (Madeline Bertrand's donation); first American postulants 8 Sept. 1844; the move to Saint Mary's 15 Aug. 1855 (Mother M. Angela Gillespie; 30 sisters, 60 students); Civil War nursing at Mound City and Cairo (70 sisters); the 1855–1905 annals (nearly 1,000 sisters); entrants 1956–1960 (344) and the post-1965 decline.