Two Pioneer Mothers

"Two Pioneer Mothers: Gertrude and Cecilia," written by Doris Walsh, BVM, tells a story of the westward movement that your history classes probably never covered: It's the story of how the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM's), a teaching order of nuns begun in Ireland, put down new roots in the Iowa Territory and educated frontier children in schools across the West. When you have finished this book, you will never again complain about how busy the modern woman is. ...
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"Two Pioneer Mothers: Gertrude and Cecilia," written by Doris Walsh, BVM, tells a story of the westward movement that your history classes probably never covered: It's the story of how the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM's), a teaching order of nuns begun in Ireland, put down new roots in the Iowa Territory and educated frontier children in schools across the West. When you have finished this book, you will never again complain about how busy the modern woman is. Like all settlers, the BVM's hauled wood and water, farmed, froze and baked and often went hungry. On top of that survival work, they developed and served in their internal government, financed and oversaw the construction of the motherhouse, and, most important, provided the region's young, many of them immigrants' offspring, with the academic skills that equipped them to rise. To succeed in their teaching mission, they built schools, standardized texts and developed curriculums. And because they needed training themselves to teach their secondary classes, the order's members broke barriers within the church against higher education for women, becoming some of the nation's first religious to attend college classes at both Catholic and state universities. Walsh writes about the second generation of leadership, the two women who shaped the order in America, Sister Mary Gertrude Regan, the pragmatist, and Sister Cecilia Dougherty, the visionary. The two women were diametrically opposed. Writes the author, "Where Mother Gertrude was respected, Mother Cecilia was loved." It was Mother Cecilia who saw to a college education for her educators and built high schools for Catholic school girls when "normal" school was considered plenty of schooling for them. And it was she who was able to empower and inspire. Walsh plays the characters off against each other, the dynamic tension enlivening the narration as no chronological account could. The book works as a portrait of two remarkable nineteenth century women, a history of the BVM order and an account of a heretofore neglected slice of the western settlement experience.