Sunday, August 10, 2014

The Fastest Nun in the West

By Vickie McDonough

Murderous outlaws. Founding schools. Saving the lives of strangers. Rose Maria Segale’s life would one day become the stuff that legends are made of, but she started out with humble beginnings. She was born in the tiny Italian village of Cicagna on January 23, 1850, but her family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, when she was four years old. She wanted to become a nun, even at a young age, and she told her father that as soon as she was old enough she wanted to join the Sisters of Charity. When she was sixteen, she entered the novitiate, becoming Sister Blandina.


For a short time in 1872, she taught in Steubenville and Dayton, Ohio. Much to her delight, she received word from that she was to go to Trinidad to work as a missionary. Her hope of traveling to a foreign country was soon dashed when Sister Blandina boarded the train and realized that the Trinidad to which she was going was not a tropical island, but the westerner frontier of Colorado.

William H. Bonney aka Billy the Kid
In Trinidad, she discovered a town frequented by outlaws. Lynching was a common practice, and law was often determined by the mob not the sheriff. One day, two men shot it out, ending with one man fatally wounded and the other in jail. Friends of the dying man were waiting for him to pass, and then they planned to storm the jail and lynch the shooter. The son of the man, one of Sister Blandina’s student, rushed to her and begged for her help. Appalled, she hurried to the dying man’s bedside and pleaded with him to forgive the man and allow the law to determine his punishment, rather than the frenzied mob. He did, and the shooter faced a judge, not a lynch mob. This fascinating story was later re-enacted on the CBS series Death Valley Days. The episode was called "The Fastest Nun in the West.”

Sister Blandina Segale was later transferred to Santa Fe, where she co-founded public and Catholic schools. During her time in New Mexico, she worked with the poor, the sick, and immigrants. She was also an advocate on behalf of Native Americans and Hispanics who were losing their land to swindlers.


Though Sister Blandina helped many, it was her encounter with Billy the Kid that made her famous. The sister learned of a wounded outlaw the town’s doctors had refused to treat, and she found and nursed the man back to health. When Billy came to Trinidad to scalp the doctors for not treating his cohort, he met Sister Blandina and thanked her and offered to do anything she asked. What she asked for was that he spare the four doctors. Billy wasn’t happy, but he kept his word, and Sister Blandina saved four men that day.

In a later encounter with the outlaw, the sister told how she was inside a covered wagon when Billy tried to rob its passengers. Seeing her there, the outlaw supposedly tipped his hat to her and left empty-handed. In letters to her sister, she described Billy the Kid as having “a rosy complexion and the air of a little boy. … He could choose the right path, and instead he chose the wrong.” Many of the tales she wrote in letters to her sister later became a book, At the End of the Santa Fe Trail. Sister Blandina Segale choose the right path for her life and ended up helping many people.



Song of the Prairie

Janie Dunn’s dream of being an opera singer suddenly fades when, at her dying cousin’s request, she flees Boston with her cousin’s newborn son to protect him from his abusive father. She moves to Kansas to live with her brother, but life takes another dire change when he is suddenly killed. Is a marriage of convenience the answer to her problems? Is Kansas far enough away from Boston that they are safe from the baby’s vengeful father?




Bestselling author, Vickie McDonough, grew up wanting to marry a rancher, but instead, she married a computer geek who’s scared of horses. She now lives out her dreams in her fictional stories about ranchers, cowboys, lawmen and others living in the West during the 1800s. Vickie is the award-winning author of over 30 published books and novellas. Her books include the fun and feisty Texas Boardinghouse Brides series, and End of the Trail, from the Texas Trails series, which was the OWFI 2013 Best Fiction Novel winner. Whispers on the Prairie, Pioneer Promises book 1 was a Romantic Times Recommended Inspirational Book for July, 2013. Forging a Family, a novella in The Pioneer Christmas Collection, is a finalist in the IRCA (Inspirational Readers Choice Awards)














8 comments:

  1. What a fun and inspiring story! I like her spunk!

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  2. I love history and this story was absolutely fascinating! Thank you for sharing about Sister Blandina and her encounters! I love stories of spunky women who made a difference in the wild west frontier!!

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    1. I'm glad you enjoyed Sister Blandina's story. You and I love the same kind of books. :)

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  3. Love this post, Vickie. Makes me want to write about her.... oh yeah, that's already been done :) Think I'll go buy her book instead and read more about her. Thanks for making the west come alive.

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    1. Waving! Let me know what else you find out about her.

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  4. I love finding characters like this in research, makes the task so fun.

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    1. Me too, Melissa. A friend messaged me and gave Sister Blandina's name. I looked her up and was instantly intrigued with her story.

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