Item 12 - Letter from Mother Mary Gertrude to Fr. Peter Bowe

2 pp; typescript

Letter from Mother Mary Gertrude, Mother Superior, St. Joseph’s Academy, Tipton, Indiana, to Fr. Peter Bowe OFM Cap., Provincial Minister. She explains that she met Fr. Luke Sheehan on a ship from Ireland in 1908, and he has since written to her ‘making a great effort’ to get sisters to help his mission. Mother Gertrude proposes a plan to recruit young women from Ireland to join their order specifically to serve the Oregon mission. She describes their ‘young and flourishing institute’ in Indiana where these young women could be trained in religious and secular subjects before entering the novitiate.

Although Mother Gertrude promised Fr. Luke Sheehan she would send sisters, she passed away in 1916 before the promise was fulfilled. Her successor, Mother Xavier, eventually honoured the commitment, and the first group of sisters finally arrived in Bend, Oregon, in December 1917 to establish what would become St. Charles Hospital.