Speaker 1: 0:02

put their names back on our trees, put their lives and what they did with them back into our family memory. So in that sense, just her life for me is enough, like that is enough reason to go find them.

Speaker 2: 0:18

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family. That inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future. I'm Krista Cowan, known online as the Barefoot Genealogist. I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. What are the odds that I would have two friends named Sunny Apparently pretty high? What are the odds that I would have two friends named Sunny Apparently pretty high? So in this episode I get to introduce you to my friend, sunny Morton.

Speaker 2: 0:49

Now, sunny and I have known each other as genealogy colleagues in the industry for a couple of decades, but we haven't been good friends until fairly recently. She and I were talking at a genealogy gathering a few months ago and she told me this incredible story about nuns. Yes, I said nuns. There are stories out there that she has to this individual, but also the work that she is doing in this entire community to make sure that the stories of these women who do not have descendants of their own are going to be found and told and preserved for generations. So tell me, what got you into family history?

Speaker 1: 1:49

Well, I started with history. Honestly like that. For me that's the most interesting part. I have a degree in history and I'm most interested. I've always been really fascinated by US history, women's history, religious history, especially in the United States where we have so many religions and they changed, like moving targets from generation to generation which religion is the most popular in this generation? And then we move forward and everything's changed, and that can happen in your family too. So really I'm the most interested in why people do what they do and in the context of United States history, religion is a big player about why people came here and where they settled and who they mingled with and what their community was like. It was a huge factor for their social lives, for even the food they ate, the way they thought. So really, to me, that gets to the heart of a person's experience in life is what's driving that experience, and in the past in the United States, religion was one of the key players in that.

Speaker 2: 2:55

That's amazing. I had no idea. So we've known each other for years and I just didn't know that this kind of history was your entrance into family history, but it is such an important part of people's identities, their faith right?

Speaker 1: 3:07

Yeah, it really is. Yeah, I have to agree, I love that.

Speaker 2: 3:11

Okay, so you know, here in the US, we talk a lot about some of the burgeoning religions and some of this changing of religion, but you're dealing with a project right now that has to do with one of the longest standing religions, right so? Catholicism. Tell me a little bit about this new discovery and this new project that you're embarking on, and I'd really like to just start, I think, with what the spark was that brought this to your attention.

Speaker 1: 3:38

That's the best I love hearing about the sparks because it really helps you understand people's stories. Hearing about the sparks because it really helps you understand people's stories. So I was working on a project for a relative on my tree, henry Fox, and he was kind of a fox in terms of sly, with his origins, like he was hard to pin down and you know, I knew something about him and his later life. I knew who his parents were and I knew that when they divorced when he was eight years old, he had no siblings. And yet on his obituary it says he's the brother of Sister Mary Bertilla of Waterloo, iowa. And I'm like what is this, right? Who is this to begin with? So where did she come from? Which parent did she come from? What was her birth name?

Speaker 1: 4:24

I can tell with a name like Sister Mary Bertilla. Just the fact that it starts with sister tells me that this is probably and I know the family was Catholic. So this tells me that this is probably a woman, religious, a nun or a sister, right? So I'm thinking how in the world am I going to find Sister Mary Bertilla of Waterloo, iowa in 1961? Because I felt like I had heard these rumors that the archives of convents of women religious were good and that they could help genealogically. But I hadn't. I didn't find any materials on how to find those archives or how to identify the right order or anything else, so I was lost. I'm not going to admit how long it?

Speaker 1: 5:08

took me to identify Sister Mary Bertilla.

Speaker 2: 5:12

So after you finally found the right archive and they finally sent you Sister Mary Bertilla's folder, there's this moment, right? Oh yes, tell me about that.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Okay, well, you know, I wasn't sure. You know, I was on archive number four or five or six, and so I didn't have real high hopes when I opened it. But like the first line was something like okay, the files that I've discovered. I'm like, oh, there's stuff, right. And I'm like, okay, how much is it going to cost me? Do I have to send away from it? And so he gives this nice long paragraph and he's like okay, here's the list of the things I've attached. And so I've suddenly just got all this stuff and so I start opening it and I was shaking a little bit. I'm like I found her, this is really her.

Speaker 1: 5:57

So I'm reading over the names and then I'm like, okay, but before I get too crazy with this, it's possible there could be a sister. Another sister, mary Bertilla. So I'm looking through her biography card and it lists her mom's name. Well, so her mom's name is Mary, right? So any mom's name could be Mary, especially a Catholic nuns, right? But it was Mary Eierman, E-I-A-R-R-M-A-N. A really uncommon surname, and I was like gotcha, I've gotcha.

Speaker 1: 6:26

So from that point on I was especially excited to read things, and it was so.

Speaker 1: 6:31

He attached lots of different things a biographical profile, her index card that was kind of like a summary of her application Lots of photos of her doing her ministry, a photo of her like playing checkers with somebody, with other nuns in her habit. She's got this big smile on her face, kind of showing the fun side of her and not just the real intense or earnest side of her side of her, and not just the real intense or earnest side of her. And then the next day he's like oh, I forgot. That archivist was like oh, I forgot to send you this. You'd probably want this too. So he kept me in mind and my question in mind, because maybe I was a little enthusiastic when I wrote back about how he really solved every problem in the world for me and how much I was so grateful. So he did respond to that by sending me even more things and later giving, letting me find a history of the community itself, and so, as I thought of more questions to ask, he was so willing to follow up.

Speaker 2: 7:27

And so kind of. What was the process of? Like you said, you went to four or five different places. Like how did you decide which ones to go to, or was there a method to?

Speaker 1: 7:35

that. So I started with her obituary, which somebody had posted on Find a Grave, which was fantastic because that linked her birth name with her religious name. That talked more about her childhood in the orphanage. So on several key points I could identify the right person. So that's the first thing that obituary did. But the next thing the obituary did was say that she started out in a Franciscan order in St Louis, and it said something about St Anthony's mother house, and so I thought I knew right.

Speaker 1: 8:13

I thought I knew where to go, and so I very confidently turned to what sounded like a St Anthony's slash Franciscan slash St Louis congregation. And I was wrong. And actually it was a men's congregation, If I remember right. And so they very kindly said well, if, based on these details, we think it's probably this one. And so they sent me to the next one. And then, oh, based on the details that you're telling me. And so one thing I learned is that these archivists are really, really smart, and so, even though most of the time when we request records from a place, we give them as little information as possible to identify the right person, In this case the more clues I could give them, the better. So actually it helped. So I would attach the link to the Find a Grave Memorial. I would say everything I knew about her and that really helped because I added a little bit more each time and I got a little closer each time and I think it was it was like the fourth or fifth time that I finally got to the right archivist.

Speaker 2: 9:21

At that moment you had, when you opened that email and found the records that this archivist had sent you for Sister Mary Batilla, that spark of such excitement. You then found out that those kinds of records exist not just for her, but for how many of these 350,000 women?

Speaker 1: 9:40

Well, I certainly wanted to know, that's for sure. So it was this moment of discovery and like, is this a common thing? Is this available for other sisters out there? How many other sisters? And so it started me down this path of what's in your archive and what's in your archive, and do you have this stuff too? And how many other sisters? And so it started me down this path of what's in your archive and what's in your archive, and do you have this stuff too? And how many of these women? And it took me forever to find that number, that 350,000 number, even to characterize who this entire historical population was. But, yes, that moment of realization that it's not just for her, it's for all these other unknown women out there, I bet there's this kind of trove for them too. Yeah, wow, that's amazing.

Speaker 2: 10:24

So, as you have learned more about Sister Mary Bertilla, it sounds like you've been able to put together this really beautiful concept of her life that fills in your family history story. But in the process of finding her, you have found this treasure trove of information that exists for these women that a lot of people probably aren't looking for. Because of their religious affiliation, they don't have children, and so nobody's climbing a family tree looking for them, and so tell me what's kind of next for you, or what you're doing with this information, because it's a lot.

Speaker 1: 10:57

It is a lot and honestly, after getting all this information from the archive, I was like wait, what Is this an exception or is this the rule? If I were to go to other archives, if I were to try to research other women, would it be this rich or is this rare? So I started asking those questions, krista, and that's really where it's taken me is to start to visit lots of different archives from different traditions so the Dominicans, the Benedictines, the Ursulines, congregation of St Joseph, sisters of Charity starting to visit all these different archives and say what do you have that you will share with others? They'll have confidential things, but what do you have that, if a genealogist or a local historian or a parish historian were interested in telling this woman's story or this community story, what do you have that could help? And they've been so generous in opening their records to me, insofar as it's appropriate, right, because they have their rules for access and confidentiality.

Speaker 1: 12:01

So I'm learning about those rules, as they vary from archive to archive, but I do find this really rich treasure trove and what it's telling me is that we need to know, we need a roadmap, we need to know, as researchers, how to get to them and you know you acknowledge that maybe these aren't our highest priority on our tree because it's not in our direct line. If she remained a nun, she didn't have any offspring or our great-great-aunt or someone else on our family tree. But you know we talk about collateral research all the time, don't we? So I'll start with the woman herself, as the more I learn about these communities, the more I admire and respect what these invisible 350,000 women have built in the United States over time. You know I told you I was interested in religious history and women's history and US history, and yet I had never heard that basically the part of the social infrastructure and humanitarian infrastructure of our country after about the 1850s was built by these sisters in their poverty, devoting their entire lives to this and that's. It's so admirable and it's a way of life that is declining, that's disappearing. So I think those women are worth remembering for just themselves and somebody needs to remember them.

Speaker 1: 13:29

And if you're the great nephew or the great aunt or great niece or whoever you are to them and you can find them you're the great nephew or the great aunt or great niece or whoever you are to them and you can find them you're doing everyone a service to remember them, put their names back on our trees, put their lives and what they did with them back into our family memory. So in that sense, just her life for me is enough, like that is enough reason to go find them. But then all the collateral stuff that you find? So I've seen personnel files that have all the family photos that were mailed to that sister during her lifetime that descendants had never seen, and they're all just sitting there. They're all just sitting there Mask cards, obituaries, news clippings, letters from the family, probate papers, her naturalization papers.

Speaker 1: 14:16

So it's just kind of looking at these and saying what and not so not just for her but for her next of kin. So you're really getting this sort of mini treasure trove of family history in these personnel files. I'm not going to promise it's in every one of them, sure that that was preserved by the order. But you know, when she died, everything she had which wasn't much belonged went back to her order.

Speaker 2: 14:43

Right. So many questions. Okay, let's start with this one. First of all, let me just reiterate what you just said, because I think one of the things that resonates so much with people, especially new people to family history, is photos exist, that there's a chance that the photo of my great grandfather as a child, with her as his sister, you know, like that. She may have that in her possession and have had that and carried that with her through her life. I think that's beautiful, but the fact that those have been hidden away and are just now coming to light is really exciting.

Speaker 1: 15:16

It is exciting, but hidden away really is. It's're still hidden away A lot of these archives. They're little and they're not, you know, super funded. A top priority of the nuns and sisters is not remembering their own legacy, it's taking care of others or it's their ministry of prayer or whatever their mission is, and they're modest. They don't necessarily put much into doing that. But, that said, they do have archives. They may have been run for many years by volunteered retired sisters, but many of them have transitioned to lay archivists or professional archivists outside the church and so they're being run in a little bit more professional manner. But there's not finding aids online. Krista, the website for the order probably has a link to the archive and will tell you some basic information, give you the contact information you need, but it's not going to detail all the collections they have.

Speaker 2: 16:17

There's no index.

Speaker 1: 16:18

Yeah, there's no index.

Speaker 2: 16:19

This stuff isn't digitized, so this, like you said, it's still hidden away society to serve in this way and kind of an obscurity and by bringing these stories to light, is that, you know, like there's kind of a balance between honoring their wishes and their memory and the way they chose to live their life and bringing these stories to light now?

Speaker 1: 16:54

That's absolutely true, and at every archive I go to, when I find sisters there, I, just a couple weeks ago, I spent the weekend at a Dominican convent, a Dominican monastery, and stayed with them and ate with them and prayed with them and learned more about them as I was working in their archive. And the big question on my mind is how do you want to be remembered? You know, if you don't want your names and dates and good acts splashed all over the internet, you know, I want to be respectful in terms of how we remember them, and that, I think, is going to vary by community. Krista, there are still some communities that are contemplative and cloistered, meaning they don't have much interaction with the outside world and they don't even maintain an archive. And I started writing to a few of those and I have gotten one response back from a poor Claire's group that was so polite we don't have an archive. God bless, you go away, we're very busy and you know.

Speaker 1: 17:59

So these communities are still there and some of them may not necessarily want to be remembered by name, but I do believe in most cases, when I talk to the women while it's not out and 100 years from now, people will say why did people do that? And you know they won't be able to speak for themselves. So the idea that their stories could be out there, that could inspire even a life of faith, is gradually declining and disappearing in many parts of the United States. So the idea of faith will be a novelty to many generations. And as I put that idea out there, the sisters do say we, you know, we do want that legacy, that witness of why we did and what we did. We do want that to be remembered.

Speaker 2: 18:56

Yeah, you mentioned, like you know, the decline and the closing of some of these orders. So what happens to those archives when an order closes?

Speaker 1: 19:06

They're in crisis, krista. So there was a study done recently. That's something like 60% of those archives will need to find a new permanent home in the next 10 years. So they are moving targets and I'm worried about the records being lost or being buried somewhere where they're not cataloged and that we couldn't find them. Most of them, their top priority is to send them to another archive of the same stripe, so to speak. So another Dominican archive or another Franciscan Archive. And there is a collaborative archive up at Boston College that's begun collecting lots of orders archives, and there's one in Cleveland, where I live, that will open in a couple of years. That's collecting materials from Ohio and the regions around there. So that is one solution that's coming up, but I am afraid that some of their stories and records will just be lost in transition, when they're no longer there to speak for and care for their own collections.

Speaker 2: 20:09

So the spark for you to get into family history was religious history, local history, us history. The spark for this particular project was Sister Mary Bertilla and her story, and what I'm hearing maybe now is that there's a little bit of a spark for another project for you, right?

Speaker 1: 20:26

You know, I do feel like we need that roadmap that I mentioned earlier to help researchers find these women and find their archives. So, yes, I'm working on a project that will articulate that. I'm writing something that will so you know, watch later for an announcement but I will have something that will help people find those. And I'm also doing what I can to respectfully get the word out to people in my community and to others who might care about their legacy and their records and who can help, and how can they help the sisters themselves in their archives. Who can support that? So getting the word out is not just about genealogy, it's about the preservation of their history. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2: 21:11

so much I love this idea that there's this information available, but there are stories 350,000 of them this information available, but there are stories 350,000 of them, 350,000 unique stories of women who served in their communities, founded in faith and, you know, probably didn't do it any more perfectly than any of us do anything else in our lives, but did it earnestly. And now we have this opportunity to find those stories and to share those stories. And if those stories come from our own families, I think you know that the drive to seek them out is probably a little bit more. But I love that you know you're seeking those stories out even if they're not all directly connected to you and and trying to figure out how to preserve them. I think that's important.

Speaker 1: 21:56

You know they're not connected with me and many times the sisters are asking why are?

Speaker 1: 22:00

you doing this Right and I think that what you just said is right.

Speaker 1: 22:05

I am so inspired by the lives that they lived and the examples that they had, and I'm so aware also that this is a dying way of life and that it's it's an invisible population that deserves to be remembered.

Speaker 1: 22:21

It's kind of like in my head, they've sort of fallen off our family trees. They're listed there with their birth names and their birth dates and places and maybe they appear in a census or two and then they're just gone and I would love to see that some closure and some story attached to their profiles in our family tree. But I also feel like their real story would be better told in their own database of 350,000, where they're connected to each other in community, with the women with whom they spent their lives and with whom they shared a common cause. So I guess, if you had to ask me, what would I wish for? I would wish for that kind of database for them, owned and managed and controlled by them, with the information they care to share, so that they could have their legacy remembered as an entire community and not just individually or even just individual orders, but as a whole. What did these sisters, who were they and what did they give us?

Speaker 2: 23:20

Well, I think that's actually a really beautiful place to kind of bring us right back to Sister Mary Bertilla and her story. So one of the things that you shared with me was the obituary that was written for her, and in the work that you and I do, we read a lot of obituaries. I sometimes sit and read them like bedtime stories because you get the snapshot of someone's life and usually those obituaries are written by a family member. You know, I wrote an obituary for my aunt and I remember thinking she also had no children, she was not religious, but I wanted people to read that obituary and know who she was, yes, and have a sense of her. And that was so important to me, not just to do like a travel log of her life but to really infuse some character into it.

Speaker 2: 24:06

And I have to say that when I read Sister Mary Bertilla's obituary I got that same sense and it was written by a woman who served with her and I loved that. There was a line and I'm going to quote it because it was so impactful to me. She actually wrote it almost like a story and she wrote it about like walking out and hearing the birds and then moved into the life of Sister Mary Bertilla and she said and then I heard a meadowlark sing and it was just so lovely to think that she equated the work that Sister Mary Bertilla had done and connected it with that beautiful thing in nature that she was experiencing. In the morning she heard she died. I don't know if you had the same experience You're so much closer to it but being an outsider reading that was super impactful to me.

Speaker 1: 24:54

It was impactful to me also and I love what you said about you know, our obituaries are often the last word and somebody else gets to say the last word about us, right? Unless we take control and write our own obituaries and someone's willing to run them right. So that last word, I think it can be really powerful or it can be really weak, depending on who and how and the circumstances. And you're right, Her last word was really powerful because it was written by somebody who got her, someone who understood the life that she had and why she chose it and what she did and what she gave up to do it.

Speaker 2: 25:32

Yeah, I guess that's all any of us can hope for at the end, huh.

Speaker 1: 25:35

Yeah, maybe I should start looking around for a person who could write mine. I should start looking around for a person who could write mine. Well, not yet.

Speaker 2: 25:44

You have a lot of work to do. Still, I do Thank you so much for being here, for telling me this story, for helping us all see the information about this record and these women and what's possible. I'm excited to follow along as you continue to make these records more accessible and available and more information about them for people.

Speaker 1: 26:02

Thanks for having me and thanks for letting me tell the story.