Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1990
Abstract
In the mid-eighteenth century, a young Irish woman, Nano Nagle, renounced her wealthy upper-class background and dedicated herself to ministering to the poor. Her belief in "women's potential as nurturers and ethical models for children" prompted her to establish several schools for needy boys and girls as well as to minister to the sick. After Nagle's death, the order she founded in 1776 became known as the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and as part of a growing movement among Catholics in America in the ineteenth century, the Presentation sisters expanded their outreach to the American West, arriving in San Francisco in 1854 and in the Dakota Territory in 1880. In Women with Vision, Susan Carol Peterson and Courtney Ann Vaughn-Roberson chronicle the American experience of the Presentation sisters as they struggled to minister to the Dakota Sioux, Anglo Catholics, and eventually, non-Catholics as well.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly FALL 1990.Copyright 1990 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.