Date of Award
Spring 1943
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History
Abstract
In no period of American history was their greater expansion of industry, commerce, and development of American life in general than in the nineteenth century. It was during this great surge of American enterprise that a number of Catholic religious sisterhoods sought refuge on this soil from European persecution. Their cultural contributions were to extend not merely to a few cities but rather to states and in the final analysis were to effect general American attitudes by overcoming at least two frontier prejudices; the biased opinions existing toward foreigners by those who were themselves Americans but for a century or less, and the erroneous public attitude in regard to hospitals as institutions merely for those in the extremity of disease who had no one to care for them. One such religious community which contributed to breaking down these detrimental opinions was that of the Hospital Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis to which most of this present work is devoted, but it must be noted that the influence exerted by this particular congregation was but typical of the many other such groups who chose America as the field of their endeavors during the latter half of the nineteenth century...