|
In 1864, four sisters traveled to St. Ignatius, MT, becoming the 1st white women to cross eastward over the Rocky Mountains. Thus began the sisters’ 1st mission in Montana - the 1st of several schools for native children. Columbus Hospital (had my tonsils out here) [now Benefis], Great Falls, MT, founded 1891, was the 1st permanent hospital in this fledging town established seven years earlier.
from their website: Begging tours: The pioneer sisters took lengthy, dangerous trips by horseback, stage coach, wagon and river boat to the communities, mines and lumber camps in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and the Caribou Country in British Columbia. They begged for donations, provisions and the precious gold dust and nuggets essential to the support of their works of charity. Their travels took them as far as the east coast and South America.
Spell-binding stories written in their chronicles relate the often treacherous journeys of the sisters deep into the mines, encountering robbers, fighting off wolves threatening their campsite and battling forest fires.
Begging tours of several months’ duration could garner as much as $2,800 or as little as $325, the latter barely enough to cover their travel expenses.
"How much more agreeable for me to remain at home," wrote Mother Joseph in June 1876, "but with the large debt we still carry and the needs of the poor, the sick and the orphans pressing, it is with all my heart I leave my solitude, for the toilsome task of begging."
from their website: Begging tours: The pioneer sisters took lengthy, dangerous trips by horseback, stage coach, wagon and river boat to the communities, mines and lumber camps in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and the Caribou Country in British Columbia. They begged for donations, provisions and the precious gold dust and nuggets essential to the support of their works of charity. Their travels took them as far as the east coast and South America.
Spell-binding stories written in their chronicles relate the often treacherous journeys of the sisters deep into the mines, encountering robbers, fighting off wolves threatening their campsite and battling forest fires.
Begging tours of several months’ duration could garner as much as $2,800 or as little as $325, the latter barely enough to cover their travel expenses.
"How much more agreeable for me to remain at home," wrote Mother Joseph in June 1876, "but with the large debt we still carry and the needs of the poor, the sick and the orphans pressing, it is with all my heart I leave my solitude, for the toilsome task of begging."