The Echoes of the Civil War in Santa Barbara

The connections between Santa Barbara and the history of the Civil War aren’t well-known. Although the state of California played a major role in ensuring the Union’s decisive victory, the city was far removed from the brunt of the war’s violence. Still, the people of Santa Barbara made several notable contributions to the war effort. Among them was the formation of volunteer Santa Barbara Company C of the First Battalion of the Native California Cavalry under the leadership of Antonio María de la Guerra in 1864. Less prominent in the lore of the conflict was the dangerous and selfless work of the Civil War nurses, and among these nurses was a Daughter of Charity and Santa Barbara resident of 39 years: Sister Mary Rose Brady.

Nursing was a fledgling and male-dominated profession at the outbreak of the Civil War. When the war’s staggering casualties overwhelmed hospitals, Catholic nuns were the only people in the country who had the skills to provide critical care to gravely wounded soldiers. The nuns’ mission to care for the poor, marginalized, and sick equipped them with the practical knowledge in providing medical care for wounded soldiers. During the war, more than 600 Catholic nuns from 21 religious orders worked as nurses in Confederate and Union hospitals. Serving as a neutral nursing corps, they traversed battlefields and toiled in prison camps and military hospitals across 15 states and the District of Columbia. They endured the dangers of warfare, contended with a deep-seated anti-Catholic prejudice, and braved exposure to disease to provide lifesaving assistance and compassionate care for mortally wounded soldiers. 

Sister Mary Rose was born in the Deep South in May 1837 in Mobile, Alabama. The rare extant accounts of her life described her as a “gentlewoman,” a scion of “a fine old Southern family.” As a teenager, Mary Rose chose to forsake the life of privilege and following in the footsteps of her older sister, she joined the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in 1856 at the age of 19. Before the start of the Civil War, Sister Mary Rose honed her nursing skills while working at the House of the Five Wounds orphanage in New Orleans and the City Hospital in Mobile. When the war erupted in 1861, she was working at St. Mary’s Asylum in Natchez, Mississippi.