Page:Lest We Forget The Sisters of Providence in Civil War Service.djvu/11

 In 1850, Terre Haute already had its parochial grade and high schools; now the Sisters were invited to open a hospital there. But they were not able to undertake it at their own expense, and the city demurred; so the secondary object of the Community's activities during its first twenty years of existence was private and circumscribed.

Cloistered by the majestic forest, the Convent and Academy at St. Mary-of-the-Woods in 1860 would seem to have been too remote, too securely enclosed, to hear the rumblings of the approaching national disturbance. Echoes of trouble, however, reached even to this secluded spot. There were many pupils from the South at the boarding school, and in the order there were members from widely