Virginia City

1864 – 1897

From 1864 to 1897, more than 50 Daughters of Charity were missioned to the rough and tumble mining community of Virginia City, Nevada. Under the most difficult of circumstances, the three pioneers, Sisters Frederica McGrath, Elizabeth Russell, and Xavier Schauer, opened St. Mary’s School and Asylum shortly after their arrival in 1864, and St. Marie Louise Hospital years later in 1875. By the mid-1890s, mining activity ceased and the population dwindled, leaving the Daughters to withdraw their ministries. However, 451 citizens sent a petition to Emmitsburg to prevent the Daughters from leaving. While their petition failed, the Daughters of Charity did return to Nevada in the 1950s to sponsor St. Teresa School in Carson City.

Sister Rapheal Creagh in Virginia City wrote in her Memoir:

“The hospital in Virginia City which was one of the finest as well as the school were gifts of all the miners, but especially the successful ones who made their money there. The hospital had an eight or ten acre lot with a fine iron fence all around it. It was a four story brick building. The school was a two-story building with a basement. The Sisters lived in a frame cottage on the same grounds as the school. It was said that many of the finest minds were developed out of St. Mary’s School and its financial backing helped many poor when sickness or death overtook the families.”