These five sisters and four lay nurses formed the first group to be trained by Ms. Wilma Johnson, a superintendent of nurses from Chicago engaged by the School of Nursing. Fom left to right seated: Sisters Julitta Hoope, Leobina Gliszhenski, Standing: Sisters Natalia Schmidtbauer, Cunigund Kuefler, Salome Amschler (Saint Benedict's Monastery Archives; McDonald, page 258).
Schools in north-central Minnesota (1871-1909). The Benedictine sisters from St. Joseph, who were teaching in Moorhead in 1883, are identified as follows (left to right): Sisters Paula Bechtold, Alphonsa O'Donnell, Euphrasia Hirtenberger (Saint Benedict's Monastery Archives).
Benedictine Sisters of Duluth picking berries on the western 80-acre parcel of their Kenwood property. At the far left is Sister Amata Mackett, the farm manager.
The Kerst sisters, Mother Scholastica (1847-1911) and Sister Alexia (1856-1915) were among the group of Benedictine sisters to come from St. Benedict's Convent in St. Joseph, Minnesota, to found the new Benedictine community in Duluth in 1892.
In 1900, several Duluth Benedictine Sisters host a tea party for a guest at the original St. Ann's Home. When the original St. Mary's Hospital moved to east Duluth in 1898, the building was converted to first an orphanage and then a rest home. Left to right, Sister Camillus Gretsch, Sister Caroline Scheffold, Sister Madeline Heinen and guest.
Schools in south-central Minnesota (1876-1909). The original group of three Benedictine sisters who opened St. Bernard's School: Sisters Eugenia ONeill (seated), Secunda Hansen (right), Auxilia Kapsner (left). The number of sisters at St. Bernard's Parish increased in subsequent years to thirty sisters serving on the faculty of St. Bernard's School (Saint Benedict's Monastery Archives).
Schools in north-central Minnesota (1871-1909). Some of the sisters teaching in Duluth before the separation of the Duluth sisters from St. Benedict's in St. Joseph are identified as follows. Top Row - left to right: S. Catherine Siefner, Clementine Jastrzenska, Florentine Cannon, Augustine Terhaar, Margaret Dellwo (Delleveaux); (Bottom Row - left to right): S. Bertha Cherrier, Regina Otto, Cornelia Berg, Anastasia Gerard, Magdalen Walker. Duluth was first settled because of a short-lived rumor in 1854 that copper and ore were found on the North Shore. It was not until 1869, when Duluth was connected to St. Paul by railroad, that the population began to grow. Though Duluth experienced a five-year set back in 1873 when Jay Cooke's (financier of the railroad-to-the-Pacific) financial empire collapsed, it became the ore capital and the grain and lumber harbor of the Northwest. Parish communities and schools began to flourish and the Benedictine sisters from St. Joseph, MN, responded to invitations to teach there: in 1881, five sisters from St. Joseph opened Sacred Heart School for over 200 children in an old carriage shop, but the pastor closed that school; in 1883, seven sisters returned to Sacred Heart Parish and taught in a public school building until a new school (St. Thomas Aquinas) was built; in 1885 sisters began teaching in St. Stanislaus School in the Polish parish, St. Mary Star of the Sea; in 1887 they opened St. Clement School and also the Store-Front School on Garfield Avenue for the French parish; in 1891 the sisters opened St. Anthony's School. All of these mission schools, as well as St. Mary's Hospital, were transferred to St. Benedict's new daughterhouse which was established in Duluth in 1892. Prompted by her deposition as prioress in St. Joseph, it was the energy and the independent pioneer spirit of Mother Scholastica Kerst that effected the separation of the sisters in Duluth from the motherhouse in St. Joseph. While only 20 of the 43 sisters in Duluth opted to join the newly-formed community, Villa Sancta Scholastica, the separation strained the resources of both communities. However, both rallied and flourished in Minnesota. The Benedictines in Duluth today conduct the College of St. Scholastica and a Benedictine Health Care System (Saint Benedict's Monastery Archives; Olsenius, pages 23-24).
Schools in north-central Minnesota (1871-1909). Though St. Ann's parish in Wadena was slow in establishing a parochial school, the communion class of 1909 attests to its later rapid growth. In the late 1850s, Wadena began as a trading post with a population around 100. When the Northern Pacific railroad crossed the county in 1872, a town was established 15 miles west of the old trading post. It was named Wadena, meaning "little rounded hill" in Ojibwe. It took until 1903 before the Catholic community in Wadena managed to build a school of its own, St. Ann's School. Three Benedictine sisters accepted the invitation to teach 80 pupils there. In subsequent years, the enrollment peaked at 466 (Saint Benedict's Monastery Archives, Olsenius, page 104).
Schools in south-central Minnesota (1876-1909). Many class groups of students posed on the steps of this church, the pride of St. Joseph's Parish in Minneapolis. The twin steeples of St. Joseph's Church graced the city's landscape for about 100 years before the parish complex was razed by the city's highway system and the entire area was re-surfaced for inner city transportation (Saint Benedict's Monastery Archives).
Schools in north-central Minnesota (1871-1909). In 1887, Sisters Clara Billig and Appolonia Jensen began teaching in this one-room parish/district school and convent in Buckman. A combination parochial-district school continued there without opposition for at least another 50 years (Saint Benedict's Monastery Archives).
From the fields, the harvested potatoes were taken to winter storage in a huge root cellar (60 feet in diameter) that had been constructed out of the sand pit dug on the campus at the time of building Sacred Heart Chapel in 1911 - 1914.