The Amazing Story of Mother Bridget Hayden

August 26, 1814 - January 23, 1890

Margaret Hayden was born in Kilkenny, Ireland, and came to America with her parents, Thomas and Bridget Hayden, when she was six years old. They made their home in Perryville, Missouri. Margaret was sent to the Sisters of Loretto to be educated. On September 19, 1841, Margaret Hayden received the habit of the Sisters of Loretto at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and was given the name of Sister Bridget Hayden.

Sister Bridget was one of four Sisters of Loretto who came to Osage Mission in October 1847 to establish a school for the Osage Indian girls, later to be St. Ann's Academy. In addition to caring for the Osage girls, Mother Bridget, as she was called when she became superior, was particularly alert to every opportunity to serve the adult Osage. Through compassion for their physical ailments, she often touched their souls and earn for herself the coveted title of "Medicine Woman."

With the Osage girls, Mother Bridget had an unusual influence. It has been said that there was something distinctive in the refinement, intelligence, and religious spirit among those who had been reared under her at the Convent.

Mother Bridget's charity knew no bounds. She never refused help to anyone. During her forty three years of service in pioneer Kansas she experienced poverty and hardship. The Mission stood on the dividing line during the Civil War and while troops of both North and South respected the Mission, they pillaged the Osage homes and destroyed growing crops. Soldiers from both sides looked to the Mission for food and shelter. With hardly enough food for themselves, Mother Bridget always saw that the soldiers were take care of.

During the years the Sisters of Loretto labored in the Mission, seventeen of their members died and were buried in the convent cemetery some distance back of St. Ann's Academy. When the Sisters left St. Paul, the property was left in the hands of a caretaker, Mr. Patrick Miles, who had spent many years on the grounds of the Academy. As the years advanced the gardens of the caretaker were enlarged until nearly all of the property was under cultivation except the little plot that contained the bodies of the deceased sisters.

The Reburial

The Passionists priests, who had come to St. Paul in 1894 while the Sisters were an active part of the settlement, felt that the graves of the sisters who had given their lives to establish the first girls school in Kansas deserved far more honor than a lonely, neglected and desolate resting place. Permission was asked to remove the bodies to a plot in the parish cemetery. Permission was granted in September 1930 and plans were made for the removal of the bodies.

The first sister had been buried there in 1867 and the last in 1895. The remains were carefully dug up by the men of the parish, who had loved and revered these pioneer sisters. Each body was identified and the bones were place in separate baby caskets, all except one, that of Mother Bridget, who was buried in a full size casket.

Little remained of the bodies except a few bones. In only one case was the skeleton in a perfect state, that of Mother Bridget Hayden. The diggers found evidence of many habits with the red scapulars formerly worn by the Lorettines sewed on the front. In only one was the habit in a condition to be taken up, that of Mother Bridget.

All the coffins had rotted, the metal crucifixes and handles were in decay, green, porous, honeycombed with rust.

Mother Bridget's body had been in the ground 40 years, and yet, when unearthed, the laborers were overwhelming astonished to find the skeleton of Mother Bridget in a most perfect state, with not a bone out of place and her habit was intact and clean although the coffin had all but rotted away - only the lower part of her casket remained.

The remains were taken to the basement chapel of the parish church and for two weeks people came from miles around to view them.

The second burial took place on September 15, 1930, "from the structure that rears its steeple above the prairies, a living monument to these early missionaries." An estimated 2,000 people crowded the church for the reburial service.

The Rev. William Schafers wrote that, "the condition of Mother Bridget's remains puzzled scientists, scholars, newspaper men and all who came to view this evidence of incorruption. Kansans had never seen anything like it before."

Many of the local people, knowing of the sacrifices Mother Bridget had made and the important work she had done, interpreted the incredible state of her remains as proof that the woman was a saint. To declare a person a saint, however - even a person as seemingly worthy as Mother Bridget - is not simple matter. The process, called canonization, requires years of research and documentation of the candidate's life and deeds. Thus far, the process has never been initiated for Mother Bridget.

W. W. Graves wrote of Mother Bridget in 1938, she is "one of the most remarkable women that ever set foot on the soil of Kansas. Her picture hangs today in the State Memorial Building in Topeka, Kansas, and her spirit lives in the lives of the girls who have passed under her influence."

To Locate Mother Bridget's Remains

The remains are buried in the present St. Francis Cemetery on Kansas State Highway 47, one-quarter mile east of St. Francis Catholic Church in Saint Paul, Kansas.

To locate Mother Bridget's gravesite, enter the cemetery through the west gate, proceed south until you come to the first road going east. Turn left there and proceed east until you see a full grown evergreen tree several yards to your left.

Approaching that tree on foot, you will find a cluster of simple stones marking the graves of 18 Sisters of Loretto, including Mother Bridget Hayden.

[Editor's Note: Seventeen Sisters of Loretto, including Mother Bridget, were moved from their original resting place in the old convent cemetery to St. Francis Cemetery in 1930. The eighteenth Sister, originally buried in Texas, was reburied with them in 2005.]

Source: Osage Mission Sesquicentennial, pages 24-25, Edited by Mary Frances Vanleeuwen Casey and the Beacon, Newsletter of the Osage Mission - Neosho County Historical Society.