Alton Pryor - Fascinating Women in California History

Fascinating Women In California History

By Alton Pryor

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by Alton Pryor

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Remember the Ladies, and

be more generous and favorable

to them than your ancestors.

Do not put such unlimited

power into the hands of the

husbands. Remember all men

would be tyrants if they could.

(Quotes by Abigail Adams,

wife of John Adams, second

President of the United States.)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

The Sisters of Mercy

Mother Frances Bridgerman

Mother Frances Bridgerman, superior of theSisters of Mercy in Kinsale, Ireland, had a problem. When a priestasked Mother Frances to select recruits to go to San Francisco in1854, she hesitated, fearing the women would get scalped.

Despite San Franciscos reputation as alawless city, twenty-nine Irish Sisters of Mercy volunteered toserve there. From that group, Mother Frances chose eight. Sheselected 26-year-old Sr. Mary Baptist Russell as the groupsleader. Thus, from the Irish seaport town of Kinsale in 1854 cameeight young women to a completely different environment, one thatwas populated with gold prospectors, fortune hunters, andopportunists.

When the Sisters of Mercy arrived in SanFrancisco December 8, 1854, what they found was jarring.

Gold fever hit the men, and many left theirwives and children to fend for themselves while they went off topursue their fortunes.

The exploitation and sale of women werecommon practices in the roaring city, and the aged and infirm faredlittle better. Mother Mary Baptist Russell was determined to helpthe suffering.

One of her first activities was to create asafe haven for women. Under her leadership, the Sisters of Mercybegan taking in abandoned wives and mothers, prostitutes, and naveyoung girls. They also took in the elderly and began visiting thesick in their homes.

Less than a month after their arrival, thesisters were asked to visit a woman who had just died. Whilekneeling to pray for the woman, said author Sr. Mary KatherineDoyle, They realized she was not dead. After sending for thepriest, they revived the woman and sent her to the countyhospital.

Mary Baptist deliberately rented a house nearthe hospital. Daily the sisters visited the sick, intent onbringing what com-fort they could to the patients. At that time,people who went into the hospital rarely left alive, said authorDoyle.

They were left all night in the dark with nowater and no one attending them. They had no linen or pillows (theywere expected to bring their own if they had any). The nurses inthe hospital were were not employable any-where else.

When the 1855 cholera outbreak struck SanFrancisco, the Sisters of Mercy themselves went to work as nursesin the county hospital.

The San Francisco Daily News described thesisters labors during the health crisis:

A more horrible and ghastly sight we haveseldom wit-nessed. In the midst of this scene of sorrow, pain,anguish, and danger were ministering angels who disregardedeverything to aid their distressed fellow creatures. The Sisters ofMercy did not stop to inquire whether the poor sufferers wereProtestants or Catholics, Americans or foreigners, but with thenoblest devotion applied themselves to their relief.

The cholera disease ultimately killed aboutfive percent of the population.

While Mother Russells most significantcontributions were medical, it was ironic in that she hadabsolutely no formal medical training. Still, according to the SanFrancisco Ex-aminer, more than any other single individual, shehelped Cali-fornia emerge from the dark ages of hospital care.

Because of their effectiveness during thecholera epidemic, the sisters were asked to take charge of thecounty hospital. Mother Baptist agreed, but after months of caringfor the indigent at the sisters expense, she told the county itwould have to meet its financial obligation to the sisters.

She ended up buying the hospital for $14,000,and when the county built a new hospital, Mother Baptist openedSaint Marys in 1857, the first Catholic Hospital on the WestCoast.

Baptist Russell apparently didnt plan aheadon what she was going to do. She simply experienced reality andthen be-gan to build. For instance, she had not planned to build ahome for the aged, but when someone came and asked for shelter andthere was no place to put her, she began her project for shelteringthe infirm aged.

She relied heavily on the providence of God,and often be-gan a project without funding. This prompted onebishop to comment, Her heart was bigger than her purse.

In 1868, the city was besieged with adifferent disease outbreak. Smallpox hit the city. The disease wasso contagious that even ministers would not visit their dyingparishioners.

City officials opened pest houses for thoseinflicted with the disease. Nurses worked only during the day,leaving vic-tims of smallpox unattended in the darkness from duskuntil dawn.

Sr. Mary Baptist asked for and receivedpermission for the sisters to work in the pest houses. For tenmonths the sisters lived among the smallpox victims.

Mother Baptist worked with atheists,agnostics, bigots, criminals, murderers, as well as those moreupstanding. One writer said, She loved to help peopleespeciallythe poorand in so doing, she became a legend.

She provided wedding dresses for brides toopoor to pur-chase them. She visited men in prisons. She stole fromthe hospital linen supply to give to the poor. Legend has it thatMother Baptist would pull up her petticoat and wrap the hospitalbed linens around her waist and stuff them in her sleeves.

When she reached the home of a needy family,she would pull the linen out and make the beds. She did this sooften that the sisters put locks on the linen closets. One time,she pulled her own mattress down the stairs to give it to a poorman.

As good as her works were, she and herSisters of Mercy had their detractors. An anti-catholic writeraccused the Sisters of mismanaging the hospital and of abusing thepatients. In her direct way of getting to the issue, Mother Baptisturged a grand jury investigation into the allegations of theaccuser.

The grand jury lauded the hospital as one ofthree out-standing institutions of San Francisco, along with theschools and the fire department.

Mother Baptist Russell died in August 1898,and thou-sands came to her funeral. Fr. R.E. Kenna, a Jesuitpriest, summed up her life in a letter to the bereaved sisters:

Gentle as a little child, she was brave andresolute as a crusader. Prudence itself, yet she was fearless indoing good to the needyall who met her were forced to admire; andthose who knew her best loved her most.

(Authors note: Much of this material wasfirst published in the book, A Call to Care: The Women Who BuiltCatholic Healthcare in America. The book is now out of print.)

The Sisters of MercyConvent in Grass Valley is part of St. Pa-tricks Church builtthere in 1858. The Henry Scadden house on the right was first usedas an orphanage for small boys and later as a SistersChapel.