Around 1937, Sister Raphael Creagh wrote her memories of Virginia City.
I received the Holy Habit for St. Theresa’s day, October 15, 1889. When I went to
see Mother Marianna, I was told I would leave the following week with her and Sister
Mathilde Comstock. They were going to New Orleans and I was to go with them to within
a few hours of St. Louis where they would change cars, but Sister Magdalene Malone had
received word to meet me in St. Louis. I was to remain there in the old insane asylum in the
downtown district from Thursday until Sunday evening when sister would see me off for St.
Mary’s School, Virginia City, Nevada. The following Sunday Sister Magdalene took me to
the station where two very fine gentlemen, railroad officials, met her. After much formality
and diplomacy, they bid us adieu -- but here is where my troubles began.
I was given an interminable number of railroad tickets with all kinds of fine print on
the back, which I thought was not necessary for me to read since I had received verbal
orders from the two railroad officials. I was told the first change would take place at
Denver, Colorado and not to worry until I got there, but it was at Kansas City the next
morning that the trials began.
On our way out from Kansas City the conductor came around for my ticket
accompanied by a brakeman. The conductor must have been an A. P. A. [American
Protestant Association] who were in great power in those days. He seemed to ignore me for
what I was and said, “Why didn’t you have your ticket exchanged in Kansas City?” I told
him that I was not instructed to that effect. “Well, I’ll have to put you off if we do not hear
by the time we reach Topeka as to whether or not you can continue,” he said coldly. I said,
“Couldn’t I pay until we reach Denver since the officials in St. Louis said the first change
would be made there?” Then he said angrily, “We’ll see!”
We reached Topeka in time and waited there twenty minutes. When the train started
again I felt relieved for I thought then that they had heard I could continue, but much to my
surprise when we were three miles out of Topeka, he came to say that I must get off and
wait for the next train which would arrive there at midnight. It was then twelve noon!
I was forthwith put off the train and found myself in the middle of a Kansas
prairieland. Nothing could be seen but the barren earth, the clear sky and the railroad ties on
which I was to walk to get back to Topeka. My heart stood still when the brakeman got off
with me. He was the same man who had accompanied the conductor. I had visions of
being killed by this man on this lonely waste of land and thought how awful it would be -wearing the habit of the Sisters of Charity. The community was in no way to blame for my
presumption in traveling alone, for Mother had asked me if I thought I was equal to the trip.
Being too smart in those days, I boldly said, “I can travel anywhere while I can talk.” But
God took care of me even if I was bold.
The brakeman proved to be more of a gentleman than the conductor, for he left the
car evidently just to care for me. He began by saying, “Don’t be afraid of me, I’ll
go back to Topeka with you. I have a sister who went to school to the Sisters of St. Joseph
at Kansas City and my mother and she helped the church and sisters whenever they had a
bazaar.” I was so full of fear that I wasn’t even polite and when I got normal again I
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thought of his great kindness and have often wondered if any good fortune came his way
from my poor prayers that only God knows I said for him. We finally reached Topeka. My
heart was in my mouth. The brakeman took my long list of tickets to the ticket window
which was in an old room in the shamble that seemed to be used for every kind of purpose.
When he told the ticket agent what had happened he glared at me and said, “Couldn’t the d - fool read?” The man in the hotel office treated me more kindly and took me to the
reception room on the second floor. I don’t remember seeing the brakeman again to even
say “thank you” to him.
Another episode happened here. I think all the people in Topeka had been notified
that a one-man circus had come to town and to come and see the great curiosity at the hotel.
These good people walked around me and seemed to view me from every angle. They
brought me some supper about six o’clock, but I was too heart-sick to eat. I doubt whether
I thanked them. About eight p.m. I had some real wild west experience. In one of the
adjoining rooms, some men began to play cards. I could hear their talking through the
transom, and, believe me, I never heard the like language before or since. At eleven fortyfive I heard the train whistle and the nice man in the office came to tell me that the train was
coming. When I got downstairs, I said, “How much do I owe you?” He said, “Nothing!” I
am sorry this has happened.”
Another episode. When I boarded the train, I saw a porter and when he saw me, I
know he thought I came from another world. I said to him, “Where is my berth?” He had
to get over his fright before he could answer. He pointed to a berth that a man was just
getting out of and said, “Get right in thar.” I said very coldly, “After you have changed the
linen.” There was no sleep for me that night, but when I got settled for the day, I found the
conductor quite different from the one who put me off at Topeka. The next stop really was
Denver. This was the first time I had breathed freely for days. We changed there to the Rio
Grande Route which went to San Francisco.
I just got seated when a lovely young woman about forty came in and said, “Oh, you
darling sister, I went to school to your sisters in San Francisco. My two little girls are going
there now.” She asked me where I was going and in order to be friendly, I related my
experiences. She was more than indignant. After telling me that her father was chief-ofpolice of San Francisco, Captain Douglas, he happened in. They had attended a police
convention in Chicago. When he heard what had happened in my regard he said, “Sister,
you’ll have no more such experiences if I have to take you to Virginia City myself.” The
Captain visited around in the train and after a while came to me with a young man, Mr.
Ferguson, who was said to be an assayer in the mines and was just returning with his bride
from Boston. I became acquainted with the young bride and discovered that she had gone
to school with some girls in Boston who were friends of mine. They had gone to the school
of Notre Dame Namur. This, of course, brought up a new interest and the couple assured
Captain Douglas that they would take care of me until they landed me at St. Mary’s School,
Virginia City.
I had to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson in Reno over night until the next day when
the train left at noon. We reached Virginia City at three p.m. It seems that I had been
promised, or some sister, three months before. As the arrival of the only train that came to
the city was always an event, all the senior girls would go down to meet the anticipated sister;
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but after three months had passed and no sister came, there were but three girls about
seventeen years old at the station the day I arrived. They seemed wild with delight and one
of them joyously remarked -- “Oh, welcome Sister Expectation.” I didn’t make them any
wiser to my name. The fact is, I didn’t have one. The girls took me from the Fergusons and
brought me to St. Mary’s.
The sisters were also delighted for they had been expecting me for months. “What is
your name,” they asked. I told them Mother said I would get a name when I reached my
mission and that if anyone asked me my name while I was on the train, I was to say, “Sister
Mary.” It was a worthwhile thought, for if I had had to give my family name, I would be
spelling it yet. Having arrived on November second, I nearly got Most Honored Father’s
name whose feast is nearest to November second, but the sisters said not to give me Charles
Borromeo because the children would be calling me all kinds of names. They looked back in
the prayer-book to October twenty-fourth and said that I should be called Raphael in honor
of the guide of travelers for he surely got me there.
When the sisters heard how I got there, Sister Angelica O’Hallaron considered me a
special charge and said, “If you are not all you should be some punishment will come to you
for I told Sister Phillipe Berry (an old sister who had gone to Emmitsburg to end her days)
to follow the Seminary Sisters every time they went out and tell the Lord to send [us] the one
destined for Virginia City. From then on when a reprimand was in order, I was reminded of
Sister Phillipe.
As I look back on the first few years spent in Virginia City I remember when I went
to bed at night the food I had for serious reflections -- often thinking, “This is the way I’ll be
when dead!” All the work was done in the bowels of the earth and when the children were
dismissed from school everything was as still as death -- absolutely nothing doing above
ground.
After rising at four and attending to little duties, we climbed the mountain side to go
to Mass -- no paved roads as we enjoy in these days! We had to go out to Mass every day in
the week with the exception of one or two days when we had Mass in our Chapel. For
about six months in the year we ploughed through snow up to our waists. When we reached
the church, we would shake our clothes which were perfectly dry owing to the dryness of the
climate. It never rained in summer for we lived above the clouds the second highest point in
the United States, I believe -- eight thousand feet above sea level. When we returned from
Mass which was usually said about seven, we ate breakfast sometimes in the shadows in
order to see the sunrise over hundreds of mountain peaks -- the like of which I have never
seen elsewhere.
The school was one of the finest we had in those days. The children had very bright
minds, being the sons and daughters of university and college graduates who came west to
seek their fortunes -- real adventurers! While I didn’t reach Virginia City in Hey Dey, the
slogan was even in my time, “Go west, young man, go west.” Many had made and many
had lost their fortunes. We had three girls at the school whose mother was matron at the
poor house, and she told us they had thirty-three multi-millionaires who all boasted of great
wealth in their day. ‘Twill be always so where money is concerned.
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I was appointed to teach the seventh and eighth grade boys and as I said before, they
had such fine minds and were of such sterling character. I have not met the like anywhere
else. It was my duty to answer the doorbell after three p.m. when school was out. On one
occasion Sister Baptista Lynch (R.I.P.) who was Sister Servant at the time said to me, “There
will be a gentleman here today -- a Mr. Mackey who is a great friend of the Community and
to whom we are much indebted for what the Sisters of Charity have here in Virginia City.”
Anyone who knew Sister Baptista can imagine just how I was instructed. I was told to be
most cordial and if he offered to shake hands with me not to refuse. I was to invite him in
and say, “I shall get the sisters here right away. I’m sure they will be so glad to see you.”
John arrived about three-thirty and while he was polished and cordial, I would never have
taken him for a millionaire, although I had never come in contact with one until I met Mr.
Mackey. He was well dressed of course, a man of about sixty-five years old -- had gray hair
then but it must have been somewhat sandy in his early days. His face was well freckled, but
as I said, he was polished for all of that. I ushered him into our little parlor and went to get
the sisters. Most of them had never met him before like myself, but as a matter of courtesy
inquired about “Madame” Mackey and the Princess…
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. Mr. Mackey paid for all the drinking water used in
the hospital and school. The water used in operating the mines was obtained from the
melting snows of winter and conducted through flumes over the hundreds of mountain
peaks to the mines. The drinking water was brought by pipe from Lake Tahoe on the
border of California and Nevada and seemed in those days as valuable as diamonds. Indeed
‘twas said that God never intended that man should live there, for it never rained. It was no
place for man to live and God threw in the silver in order to give him some reward for ever
attempting it. There was absolutely no vegetation except the sage brush. A few Chinese
who made an attempt at gardening had to do so by irrigation. If it didn’t snow, and that
copiously, there would be no work for the miners when summer came.
I can recall when the boys would rush in and say, “Sister, Mr. Coleman asked for the
sisters and children to pray for snow.” He was the Editor of the Virginia City Chronicle.
On one occasion I remember our prayers were more than answered, for it snowed so much
the children could not get near the school for days. Mark Twain was the first editor of the
paper, but this Mr. Coleman was not far behind him in intelligence. I recall the last verse of
a poem he wrote after being snowed in. It read thus:
“The snow on the roof is six feet high,
And that in the yard is ten,
And now, O Lord, if you’ll only let up,
We’ll never say “snow again!”
Our dear Sister Gertrude Dooling, who died here at St. Mary’s a few months ago,
immigrated with her family in the early fifties from Albany, New York, to seek their fortune
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also. She came to the Community when sixteen years of age while Virginia City was making
its history. Her family figured in the making of it. Her brother, Maurice Dooling, I read
recently, was the greatest Supreme Court Judge San Francisco ever had -- so much so, that
his son, Sister’s nephew, was appointed to replace his father when he died.
An uncle, her mother’s brother, Rt. Rev. Patrick Manogue figured in the history of
Virginia City, too. He arrived there when sixteen years of age, and since, as I have said
before, no law or order existed in his day, ‘twas said that whenever he came on the scene, his
dignity and personality accounted for so much that all disputes, whatever they may have
been, ceased. He dug the earth as the other miners did, but the engineers wanted him with
them, so they made him one of them in short order since he had such a good mind. This
brought him seven dollars a day. Then the assayers wanted him to join them and they taught
him their line of work. This paid him ten dollars a day. He made some investments as well,
and one day he surprised all his friends by telling them he was going to study for the
priesthood. He spent his money in studying at Paris, Innsbruck, Louvain and finally went to
Rome where he was ordained and returned to America for the San Francisco Diocese. He
was sent to Virginia City later while many of the miners were still there. Through the
genuine love these miners bore him, they erected a church, St. Mary’s of the Mountains,
which equaled any of its kind in Europe. After twelve years, the San Francisco Diocese had
attained such proportions that it was considered well to make a new diocese to be called the
Sacramento Diocese and he was appointed the first Bishop. He was ever after called the
“Miner Bishop” and he seemed to glory in that title. He came to see us here at St. Mary’s on
one occasion. I found him to be all I had heard of him -- the personification of dignity and
a genuine priest. I remember he said, “My sisters are the nearest to heaven in America, and
I’m sure will some day merit their reward.”
There were others among the multi-millionaires who figured in the history of these
days, the Fairs whose two daughters went to school at St. Mary’s and later married and
played their part in New York society, the Sutros, Floods, and O’Briens who lived in
California. Another rich man was “Sandy Bowers of Washoe Valley” who is said on one
occasion, when celebrating some gala feast, to have thrown green-backs from the second
floor piazza of the International Hotel into a mob of people in the street below who
scrambled fiercely for them. He built a residence for himself and wife in Washoe Valley a
few miles from Virginia City and was said to have had so much money that the doorknobs
of the house were made of gold. It was related too, that an interior decorator accompanied
him and his wife to select the furniture for the new house. I do not know whether any of
the gold knobs and fine furniture still remains but I do know that Sandy lost his great
fortune; and after God took him to Himself his wife was telling fortunes for a living and was
advertised in San Francisco as “The Seer of the Washoe Valley.”
By degrees the mines were being worked out. Day and night men were employed in
working them. Even on Sunday the work went on and some priest remarked, “There will
come a time when they’ll have no work Sunday or Monday.” That time came a few years
after I was sent to Santa Barbara. Whole families of six or eight children would take their
departure for Montana or Colorado where they were working lead and copper mines.
Finally, the hospital and school were closed. I never heard what use was made of them, if
any, after the sisters left.
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This wouldn’t be a tale of the past unless some of the pupils, those grand characters,
intelligent lads, figured in it too. Every Saturday, the school holiday, they’d take their burros
and start out “prospecting.” I had to listen to each one in turn Monday morning before the
opening of classes and seem intensely interested in the veins in the mountain peaks and their
great value which they could determine as well as any assayer.
When our school closed in the latter part of June, we had classes every morning
during the summer for the public-school children to instruct them for their First Holy
Communion. The first morning some boys ran in breathless to tell me that [Cory] was
outside. Everybody seemed afraid of him, myself included, and I had to do some fast
thinking on disciplining before he came in. Among other things, they told me that he shot at
the teacher in the public school the week before but struck the clock over her head and sent
the teacher and pupils flying out of the room. I decided to put [Cory] in the front row of
seats right in front of my desk in order that he couldn’t see what was going on in back of
him. When it came to reciting [Cory], of course, had never studied Catechism, but by the
time he finished, which occupied the two months of school vacation, he knew more that
when he began. I had him repeat the answers after I had said them first, then he would look
around at the boys as much as to say, “Didn’t I do well?” All the time I was teaching that
first day, I was trying to think out what to do with him when school was dismissed. A bright
thought came to me, and before I dismissed the class, I said, “[Cory], these children are a
perfect nuisance the way they stay around and annoy the sisters nearly all day instead of
going home. Will you please see they do not loiter around and that the grounds are cleared
as soon as they are dismissed?”
The venture proved a great success. [Cory] saw to it that there were no loiterers
around the school until the instruction school closed for that summer. I told him too that if
he would chop some wood for the sisters, we would give him his dinner. We burnt no coal - it was too expensive. From then on, he chopped all the wood. True to his reputation,
however, he still had the “wild west” in his make-up. On one occasion when two sisters
went to do some shopping and the street was blockaded. [Cory] was attacking a driver of a
big mule wagon, but when they saw the two sisters they said, “Cheese it, [Cory], the sisters.”
When he heard this, he flew and the poor driver jumped up on his seat and drove away not
from fear of the sisters, but with fear and dread of [Cory]….
I have often reverted in memory to those days and know from experience that the
boys were the soul of honor. They had no such dissipations as the boys who lived in cities.
The school was visited daily by a Priest who possessed every quality of a model priest. He
volunteered when ordained in Ireland to come to the “wild west.”
I can recall the time when he would come into the room and say, “[Lawrence], what
were you doing on your way to school this morning?” Lawrence would answer, “I was
‘rocking’ Jimmie McMurchey’s cabin.” Even in my time, old miners lived in old shambles
on the mountain side, for there were no women they could marry in mining days and
preferred to remain bachelors till the Lord called them to Himself. “Why were you ‘rocking’
the cabin”, the Priest would say. “I’ll tell you, Father. When he sees us coming, he comes
out and curses and swears at us.” Father would turn his back on the class and face my desk
and with a suppressed smile would say, “Don’t forget Lawrence, you’ll be old yourself some
day.”
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And again, [Pat], whose forebears came from the land of saints and scholars, was
absent one morning from school, much to my surprise, for he was a regular attendant.
When he finally came, he said, “Sister, I was sick this morning”. I took it for granted he was
telling the truth, but later he came to tell me that he had told me a lie. Instead of coming to
school in the morning he had gone into the tunnel to enjoy a smoke and fell asleep. When
he woke up it was too late for school. I commended him highly for telling the truth, but
added, “Do your parents know that you smoke?” He said, “No”. “Well,” said I, “God was
good to you for you might have been brought home to them mangled to pieces when they
supposed you were in school”. The tunnels had but one track used for dumping the earth
after the ore was extracted. I’m sure he believed me and never tried it again.
I took care of my own classroom but was never permitted to sweep it when any of
the boys were around. On one occasion I complained of papers on the floor and appointed
a monitor to make a list of the delinquents. One day my own name headed the list. I called
the class to order, made a most humble apology and told them I hoped it would never
happen again.
“Them days have gone forever.” I know there were many sisters who preceded me
who, if they were still living, could write more than I ever could of those days spent in
Virginia City, Nevada.
While I was never down in a mine, I think I knew quite as much as if I had been for
I had to listen to everything that interested the boys. May those days ever be a lesson to me
in many ways, those days when I lived so near to God and my duty.
[Editor’s Note: On page 4, Sister Raphael writes that Mark Twain was the first editor of the
Virginia City Chronicle which seems inaccurate; but he was definitely a writer for the Territorial
Enterprise. On page 5, she indicates that Father Manogue had been a miner in Viriginia City;
he had been miner in California.]

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