Mother Mary Baptist Russell was the founder of the Sisters of Mercy in California.
Background
Mary Baptist Russell was born in Newry, Ireland, and baptized Katherine. She was the daughter of Margaret Mullan by her second husband, Arthur Russell, a sea-captain in the Norway trade who on his marriage had turned to the less hazardous occupation of brewer. Margaret Mullan reared six children by a first husband, John Hamill, a wealthy Belfast merchant, of whom two became distinguished nuns; another, a South American patriot; and still another, a royal judge in Roscommon. Of the Russells there were also six, of whom Sarah and Elizabeth became nuns; Charles a member of Parliament, an attorney general of England, Lord Chief justice, and finally Baron Russell of Killowen; and Matthew, a Jesuit litterateur. Left fatherless, they were carefully trained by a spiritual mother and an uncle, Dr. Charles William Russell, later president of royal Maynooth, who took his guardianship most seriously. Katherine was her mother's first freeborn child after the enactment of Catholic emancipation.
Education
Katherine was educated in schools of Killowen and Belfast.
Career
Russell was a volunteer nurse in the famine and cholera days and in 1848 she joined the Institute of Mercy at Kinsale. Having attracted attention as a student and a nurse, she made her final vows of profession, August 2, 1851, and took the name in religion of Sister Mary Baptist. In 1854 she was named superior of a colony of eight selected nuns and novices who enlisted for the archdiocese of San Francisco at the solicitation of Rev. Hugh Patrick Gallagher.
Fortunately, Gallagher's party, which included Levi S. Ives and a number of Presentation nuns, missed the illfated Arctic and sailed from Queenstown on the Canada (Sept. 23, 1854), for New York. Thence they journeyed via Panama to the straggling town of San Francisco, where they arrived on December 8, 1854--in time to suffer from Know-Nothing abuse. With the assistance of Archbishop Alemany, Mother M. Baptist established a convent and school. Within a year, she was given charge of the county hospital where cholera victims were isolated. With their Irish experience, these nurses were most successful in combatting the disease. Hostility to the nuns ended in gratitude.
Two years later, she bought the building and christened it St. Mary's Hospital; it became one of the largest institutions of its kind in the country. She took charge of the smallpox hospital in the epidemic of 1868. Her devotion and disinterested spirit of boundless charity won people of all classes. In 1878 she made a journey to Ireland for novices. She had the loyal devotion of the growing Irish colony in California and when, worn out by a life of labor, obedience to rule, and soliciting campaigns for her charities, she died, the San Francisco Chronicle (Aug. 10, 1898) declared that "no dead sovereign ever had a prouder burial than Mother Mary Russell, whose life of self-denial and good works has crowned her in a city's memory. "
