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Ireland, family, St. Catherine's Hospital — connecting the dots
When visiting Ireland in June 2016, I had little idea that a new Irish friend would lead to a connection between her own family and mine. In fact, I learned of a fascinating connection between one of her great aunts, my hometown of McCook, several early local businessmen, and the former St. Catherine’s hospital.
Last year, two cousins and I traveled to Ireland to attend the McGrath Clan Gathering held in Dungarvan, County Waterford.
Jill Hotchkiss from Reva, S.D. and Marianne Olson from Des Moines share a Magrath/McGrath relationship with me that originated in the Townland of Ballynaclough near the small village of Pallas in southeastern County Limerick.
The three of us had decided before our trip to stay a few days with Marianne’s and my Irish cousin, Christine Real, who lives in Bruff, Limerick. In addition, two local genealogists had agreed to meet with us and show us the still standing house of our 3x great grandmother, Winifred Magrath Real, who was also the 3x great aunt of Jill. The house dates to the late 1700s and remains in the McGrath family, although as a storage building on the dairy farm of Denis and Kathleen McGrath. In addition, our Irish genealogy friends, Ed O’Dea and Bosco Ryan, wanted us to meet local historian, Mary O’Brien Slattery.
After returning to the States, I continued my acquaintance with all three of our hosts. At one point, I emailed documents to Mary explaining how my Irish Reals from Oola, Limerick made their way from Ireland to Illinois and then to McCook. This resulted in Mary writing an article for the annual journal of the Pallasgrean/Templebraden Historical Society. The article featured one of Winifred Magrath Real’s sons, James Joseph Real, who died at the Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War.
After learning of my connection to McCook, Mary sent me another journal article she had written that featured her great aunt, Joanne Ryan (Harry). As explained by Mary, (Harry) designates the specific Ryan line of Joanne’s paternal ancestry. Southeast Limerick is well known for its number of Ryan families as well as in the bordering area of County Tipperary.
As Mary’s article relates, Joanne Ryan was born in 1881 in the small farming village of Ballyart, Limerick in the Parish of Murroe/Boher that lies midway on the main road running between Limerick City and Tipperary Town in the midlands of Ireland. She was born to Patrick Ryan (Harry) and Mary Meaney. Joanne attended Eyon National School near her home where she completed her primary-secondary education. Although not known for sure, Mary’s family believes that Joanne’s secondary education was completed in a Limerick City convent school.
Sometime in the early 1900s, according to her great niece, Joanne used her education to seek “overseas” work as a governess to the children of well-to-do parents in England, Spain, and Portugal. Since 2017 marks the Centennial of the events of Fatima, Portugal, it was interesting to learn from Mary’s article that her great aunt had been present at the time of the Fatima Miracle in October 1917.
After her years as a governess, Joanne along with two of her friends, Mary Garth of Tullamore and Mary D’arcy of Oughterard, both of whom had been at Fatima with her, returned to Ireland where they entered a Dominican Convent in Dublin in 1923. Mary notes that soon after entering the convent, the three novices found themselves on the way to the United States by steamship. Like multitudes of Irish before them, neither of the three would return to their native country.
All three Irish women were well educated before entering the convent. As an addendum to their religious training and because of their prior education, however, the women received extensive medical training. Joanne was the first in her order to receive training as a technician in the use of a relatively new piece of medical equipment. Mary notes that her family understood that Joanne received training at the Marie Curie Institute in Paris.
In the meantime, the early 1920s had been a prosperous period for the city of McCook. Shortly after the city was founded on the main Burlington rail line that ran from Chicago to Denver and then on to points further west, the city had experienced rapid population growth as a Division Center for the Burlington.
In addition to the population growth, progressive political elements in the town led by the Citizen Party along with the ever-present publisher, Harry Struck, of the McCook Daily Gazette, began to visualize McCook as being a business leader in the three-state corner area of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado.
The decade of the 20s witnessed major street improvements in McCook and there was on-going discussion at Chamber of Commerce meetings as well as on the editorial page of the Gazette to expand and improve the main highways leading from, and more importantly, to the city from the large surrounding rural trade area.
During this period of growth and expansion to create a city of progress for the immediate three state area some of McCook’s same progressive leaders decided that what the city needed was a new hospital to replace the Reid Hospital that had been opened in 1910. Walt Sehnert noted in his Gazette column of May 12, 2014, that while it had generally been believed that the small private hospitals made up of individual physicians’ homes had served the community well, it was now time for the city to have a new and larger stand-alone facility.
Both Sehnert and Sister Paschala Noonan, in her book titled SIGNADOU, which traced the history of the Kentucky Dominican Sisters, wrote that McCook’s city fathers, largely in the form of the Chamber of Commerce and the city council, vigorously took up the challenge to build a hospital. Both authors mentioned the work of several city council members including oft-times mayor during the heydays of McCook’s progressivism, Frank Real, whose pioneer family had arrived in McCook in the early 1880s. Real was a leader of the Citizen’s Party and ran on that ticket the several times in the 20s when he was elected mayor.
Another Chamber member who worked hard on the hospital project was Francis (Frank) James Brady. As it turned out Brady’s and Real’s work on behalf of the hospital may have been underscored by the fact that they were related. Brady was married to Marcella Ryan, a granddaughter of Mary Real Ryan who was the sister to Frank Real’s father, John Martin Real (another son of Winifred Magrath Real).
And it did not hurt Real’s and Brady’s efforts on behalf of McCook to have Frank Brady’s sister-in-law involved in raising funds for the new hospital. Brady’s sister-in-law was Mary Brady. In an interview, Sister Paschala noted that Mary was one of the hardest working women in McCook on behalf of the hospital.
An additional Chamber member who answered the challenge for a new hospital was Frank Colfer. The Real and Colfer families had a relationship long before their families settled in McCook. Some four decades previously their families had lived near each other in Livingston, Illinois. One of Frank Real’s Illinois cousins, Johanna Mary Real, married Thomas Colfer, a cousin to Frank Colfer.
Still further assisting in the efforts of fund raising was the presence of county board member and business leader Cornelius (C.J.) Ryan. Ryan had a familial relationship with both Real and Brady since his mother happened to be Mary Real Ryan.
And the interrelationships did not end with those three men. Also on the Chamber’s hospital committee was attorney William Marvin Somerville. In later years, one of Frank Real’s daughters, Frances P. Real, after graduating from Texas Tech University, married James Somerville, a distant cousin of the McCook Somerville family.
While many others in McCook’s business community worked diligently to bring a hospital to McCook, the men mentioned above have been pointed out because their close relationship allowed them to work in harmony for the benefit of McCook. And their additional relationship to St. Patrick’s Church probably did not diminish this working harmony. Real, Brady, Ryan and Colfer were not only parish members but also served together in the Knights of Columbus.
As Walt Sehnert further notes in his Gazette article, the Chamber committee worked with the Reverend Father Kunz of St. Patrick’s Church to negotiate an agreement with the Sisters of St. Catherine of Sienna (also known as the Dominican sisters) in Springfield, Kentucky. As part of the agreement, the Sisters would provide nuns trained medical personnel and nurses to staff the hospital.
By the time the first Dominican Sisters from St. Catherine’s arrived in McCook in 1921, fund raising was well underway and construction had started. One of the benefits of the new hospital would be the installation of X-Ray equipment that Sehnert noted to have been “the very best in its line.”
Having the “best in its line,” staffing by the Dominican Sisters and being been named after the patron saint of the sisterhood, the new St. Catherine’s hospital still required trained personnel. Someone was required who had knowledge of the embryonic field of X-Ray technology. And with the hospital soon to be one of the largest employers in the city someone with a knowledge of financial operations was needed. As it turned out, the Dominican’s had several candidates who were anxious to serve their order’s health care program and willing to take on a new assignment in the middle of the United States.
So it was that in 1924 three trained novices of the Dominican sisterhood arrived in McCook to lend their skills to the growing presence of St. Catherine’s Hospital. Three years later all three would complete their dedication to the Religious life by taking their final vows. As part of their new life they adopted new names. The new Sister Veronica was Joanne Ryan (Harry), Sister Bertrand was the former Mary Garth, and Sister Aloysius, the former Mary D’arcy.
As it would happen, the “best in its line” X-ray equipment found its worth under the charge of Sister Veronica who had been trained as a Laboratory and X-ray technician. She also supervised the hospital’s laboratory. Sister Paschala (who also served St. Catherine’s) noted that Sister Aloysius’ training had prepared her to become the hospital’s finance officer and later Mother Superior.
It probably did not take very long before the Irish accent of the three new additions to the hospital staff identified them to many in St. Patrick’s Irish populated parish as being from the “auld sod.” Even more surprising perhaps than the fact that these three Ireland born nuns had ended up in McCook at the new St. Catherine’s Hospital was the fact that Sister Veronica had a familial relationship with Frank Real, C.J. Ryan and Frank Brady.
While it’s not known if the good Sister and the three McCook businessmen understood that relationship no doubt C. J. Ryan would have guessed that Sister Veronica, born a Ryan, and raised almost within sight of his father’s Nicker, Limerick parish church, had a relationship with his own Ryans. And that, of course, meant that she would have had a similar relationship with Real and Brady. Within walking distance of the Nicker’s parish and Sister Veronica’s Murroe/Boher parish was the Townland of Ballynaclough. There it would have been easy to find Magrath/McGrath and Real cousins whose families included a few Ryans of their own.
After serving the McCook area for 28 years, Sister Veronica spent a year at Rosary Hill, Campbellsville, Kentucky before being assigned to St. John’s Hospital in Spalding, Nebraska. In 1962, she retired at the age of 80. According to Mary Slattery, as a mark of respect for Sister’s work, age and changing health, a private plane was chartered to fly Sister Veronica from Nebraska back to the St. Catherine’s Motherhouse (now in St. Catherine’s Kentucky). She spent the following 16 years in retirement in the Sansbury infirmary.
Sister Bertrand died in 1973 and Sister Aloysius in 1976. Sister Veronica passed away on July 14th, 1977, at the age of 96. All three are buried in plots in the Motherhouse cemetery.
Three women who left their Ireland homes with little idea of the future. Having completed their religious vows together, however, and having together served their church, their vocation, the community and patients of McCook, and having together experienced Fatima, the three now lie near-by each other far from their native land.