Active religious women on the Iowa frontier: A study in continuity and discontinuity

This dissertation examines the experience of three active religious congregations (the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Presentation Sisters, and the Sisters of Mercy) in the Iowa portion of the Diocese of Dubuque from 1840 to 1880. Their experience serves as another instance in which to test the interplay of continuity and discontinuity in a frontier environment by examining to what degree their active religious life was changed and to what degree it was maintained.;The organization of this study is straight forward and its methodology simple. Chapter I establishes the background and outline of the thesis itself. Chapter II establishes the history of the three active religious congregations in nineteenth-century Ireland against the background of the nineteenth-century experience of the Irish Catholic Church, the experience of women in Ireland and the experience of their emigration to the United States. Chapters I and II depend primarily on secondary sources. Chapter III focuses on the creativity and mobility of active women religious and Chapter IV focuses on their creativity and agency. In both chapters, I utilize archival material in the form of annals, letters, and personal recollections as well as historical accounts and general studies to develop my analyses and observations.;I conclude that a frontier environment provided more continuity than discontinuity in the experience of these active religious congregations, although the environment did temporarily provide a context in which less struggle was necessary to exercise the creativity, mobility, and agency which they understood to be a part of their identity as active religious congregations. In the instance of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Presentation Sisters, and the Sisters of Mercy, a frontier environment did not radically shift their experience as women, as Irish, or as active religious. Rather, a frontier environment allowed these congregations to actualize the impulse to creativity, mobility and agency which was part of their self-understanding precisely as members of an active religious congregation. The creativity, mobility and agency required by this self-understanding were welcome qualities in Iowa's frontier environment.