HPARA @PAR@ ` ÿTEXT ` èRussell, Mother Mary Baptist
1829╨1898
religious
Born on April 18, 1829, in Newry, County Down, Ireland, Katherine Russell was educated privately and reared in an atmosphere of religion and service. In 1848 she entered the Sisters of Mercy convent in Kinsale; she took the habit and the name Sister Mary Baptist in July 1849 and made her final vows in August 1851. She served in schools and cared for the poor and sick of Kinsale until 1854, when she was named superior of a group of eight sisters and novices sent to establish the order in San Francisco. They arrived in December 1854. A convent and a school were soon established, and after the sisters╒ heroic work in a cholera epidemic in 1855 they were asked by the city to take over care of the dependent sick. For that purpose the building of the former State Marine Hospital was purchased and converted into the city and county hospital. Controversy over the question of separation of church and state led Mother Mary Baptist to terminate the convent╒s contract with the city in 1857, and she immediately bought the building and reopened it as St. Mary╒s Hospital, the first Catholic hospital on the Pacific coast.
The convent also opened a House of Mercy as a shelter for unemployed women in 1855, a Magdalen Asylum for prostitutes in 1861, a home for the aged and infirm in 1872, and other charitable institutions. Mother Mary established branch houses in Sacramento in 1857 and in Grass Valley in 1863, and in addition to schools in those places the order operated St. Peter╒s, St. Brendan╒s, Our Lady of Mercy, and St. Joseph╒s schools in San Francisco and St. Anthony╒s in Oakland. The sisters again provided heroic service to the city during a smallpox epidemic in 1868, and in the Spanish╨American War many served as nurses at the Presidio. Long a much loved and admired figure in the city, Mother Mary Baptist died in San Francisco on August 6, 1898.
