Mother Mary Baptist Russell (1829-1898)

Born Katherine Russell in County Down, Ireland, she joined the Sisters of Mercy at age nineteen, taking the name Mary Baptist. After several years teaching in Ireland, in 1854 she led a group of sisters to work in San Francisco. When a cholera epidemic hit the city in 1855, the sisters worked as nurses in the public hospital. This worked out so well that city officials signed a contract with Mother Mary Baptist whereby the sisters would staff all the public hospitals in San Francisco. The income from hospital work allowed the Sisters of Mercy to open their own institutions. In 1855 they started a House of Mercy for San Francisco’s unemployed young women, and started teaching in Catholic schools. When anti-Catholic protestors complained about the sisters working in public hospitals, Mother Mary Baptist terminated the contract with the city and opened Saint Mary’s Hospital, the first Catholic hospital on the Pacific coast. She went on to organize in 1861 in San Francisco the first Magdalene Asylum, an institution for prostitutes. It taught the women skills so that they could find other jobs. In 1872 Mother Mary Baptist founded a home for the aged and infirm. Almost as soon as she arrived, Mother Mary Baptist expanded the Sisters of Mercy beyond San Francisco and established a convent and school at Sacramento. Thanks to the work of this Catholic nun, California by the 1890s had a system of charitable care to match that of other states in the Union. Mother Mary Baptist continued her good works until her death in 1898. (Adapted From Encyclopedia.com)