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Eliza Maria Gillespie 1824 ~ 1887
Eliza Maria Gillespie, educator, was
born near West Brownville, Pennsylvania, February 21, 1824. She
removed with her parents to Lancaster, Ohio, while quite young,
and was educated by the Sisters of St Dominic at Somerset, Perry
County, and at the Convent of the Visitation, Georgetown, D. C.
Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the Treasury under Harrison, was her
godfather, and James Gillespie Blaine, Secretary of State, under
Gatfield, was her cousin. While in Europe she was a leader of
society and with Ellen Ewing, afterward wife of General W. T.
Sherman, collected large sums of money for the aid of the
sufferers from the famine in Ireland, adding to the fund by
their tapestry, handiwork and magazine stories, which they wrote
in collaboration.
She was received into the congregation of the Sisters of the
Holy Cross in 1853 under the religious name of Mother Mary of St
Angels and made her novitiate in France, taking her vows from
Father Moreau, founder of the order of the Holy Cross. She
returned to America in 1855 and was made Superior of the Academy
of St Mary's, Bertrand, Michigan, which in 1856 was removed to
Terre Haute, Indiana, where it was known as St Mary of the
Immaculate Conception, and she became the Mother Superior of the
Sisters of the Holy Cross. She obtained for the institution the
shelter from the legislature and added to the immediate
curriculum of the Academy, foundation for a professor's
conservatory of music. She multiplied academies of the order to
the number of thirty and upwards in different parts of the
United States.
When the Civil War called for nurses in the army, she left her
home, organized at Cairo, Illinois, the headquarters, enlisted a
corps of sisters, established temporary and permanent hospitals
and used her influence at Washington to further the comfort of
the sick and wounded soldiers and with the help of her corps she
cooked gruel and even fed the moving army as well as those
detained in the hospital. Her labors broke down her health, and
at the close of the war she was an invalid. The order in the
United States was separated from the European order in 1870, and
she was made Mother Superior, filling the office two terms, when
she retired to become Mistress of Novices. She contributed to
the Catholic periodicals, notably war sketches for the Ave
Maria. She died at the Convent of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame,
Indiana, March 4, 1887.
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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