Searching for Sisters—Groundbreaking Book for Finding Women Religious
Most families know precious little about the women on their family trees who joined religious life. Historians, too, have largely overlooked the estimated 350,000 Catholic women religious (nuns and sisters) in the United States between 1790 and 1990. This, despite their enormous collective contributions to the nation’s humanitarian, educational, and social services infrastructure.
Instead, the stories of nuns and sisters are largely forgotten, hidden in scattered archives, obscured by name changes and frequent relocations, fading from family and community memory with each passing generation.
Searching for Sisters is your guide to finding them.
This new roadmap for researching Catholic women religious in the United States is the handiwork of nationally recognized genealogy expert Sunny Jane Morton. Sunny teaches readers:
- Why they can be so elusive
- How to identify a woman’s religious order and locate its archives
- What rich historical and genealogical records may be in the archives
- The path and terminology of religious life
- How to find women religious in other kinds of records (censuses, etc.)
- How to find other people (students, etc.) in records kept by women religious
- About complicated institutional legacies, such as enslavement and Native American boarding schools
This guide is illustrated with sample documents; indexed; and enriched with detailed case studies by Morton and Megan Smolenyak; Margaret M. McMahon, PhD., and Matthew Cross, MLS.
Use this book to discover more about the women who devoted their lives in this unique kind of service. Or use this book to learn more about the students, communities, or other populations associated with the sisters.
Their stories are all worth telling. This book shows you how to find them.
If you are unfamiliar with Sunny’s National Genealogical Society-award winning other book, How to Find Your Family History in U.S. Church Records, check it out today as well.
