September 25, 2018
Sisters of Mercy
Yesterday, I gave the background of the Cobb House. Today, I am going to tell you about the Sisters of Mercy in Vicksburg, MS. I do want to make a quick note: the convent wasn't built until 1868.
In 1863, the school was shuttered as Sisters and families fled into the hills to avoid the cannon fire of the Civil War. After about a month, the Sisters returned to find their former school filled with sick and injured soldiers. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln even called the nuns “Angels of Mercy.” The 3rd floor and the front porch of the Cobb House had been blown off by canon fire. The nuns immediately began providing nursing care which took them out of Vicksburg for several months. During the heaviest battles, the injured were removed to areas of safety and the Sisters accompanied them to continue their care.
A few years later, Vicksburg was in need of a Catholic School because of the large number of Catholics living there. Bishop William H. Elder wrote to Mother Catherine Wynne (who was the 3rd appointed Sister of Mercy after the group was brought from Ireland to the United States). He had known of the work she and her nuns had done, and was impressed enough to ask them to send some of the Sisters of Mercy nuns to Vicksburg, MS and open a school. She agreed, and in 1860, six Sisters of Mercy, led by Sister Mary DeSales Browne, traveled half-way across the country from Baltimore to Vicksburg. The Sisters opened the first school in Vicksburg a few days later. The sisters lived and taught children in the Cobb House and in a stick framed building that sat on the land.
In 1863, the school was shuttered as Sisters and families fled into the hills to avoid the cannon fire of the Civil War. After about a month, the Sisters returned to find their former school filled with sick and injured soldiers. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln even called the nuns “Angels of Mercy.” The 3rd floor and the front porch of the Cobb House had been blown off by canon fire. The nuns immediately began providing nursing care which took them out of Vicksburg for several months. During the heaviest battles, the injured were removed to areas of safety and the Sisters accompanied them to continue their care.
In 1864, Mother Mary DeSales Browne returned to Vicksburg and reopened the school with 200 students and only four Sisters. What they saw and dealt with then was astonishing and sickening. The city was now under charge of United States General Henry Warner Slocum. He refused to let the sisters back into the Cobb House which housed United States Occupation Soldiers. The sisters begged and pleaded with Slocum to let them take charge of their home, but he refused. They were able to smuggle word out about this, and through contacts and channels, Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, released the home back to the Sisters of Mercy despite Slocum.
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