At around the same time as the University of Notre Dame was established, a smaller women-only school, St. Mary’s College, opened alongside. As one of the premiere institutions for women, St. Mary’s broke many of the traditions keeping women away from education, combining a strong liberal arts program with a theological foundation. The same order that founded the school – Sisters of the Holy Cross – took their mission, to helping their fellow human beings, to war zones, at the same time helping to break more barriers for women.

On this day, December 26, in 1862, the USS Red Rover, a hospital ship, was commissioned with a crew of 47, including three nuns from the Sisters of the Holy Cross, soon to be joined by a fourth.

Doctor William P. C. Barton, a naval surgeon himself, and publisher of an influential paper on the subject of his profession, was the first to recommend inclusion of women as nurses aboard ships. It took fifty years, until the outbreak of the Civil War, for his suggestion to be implemented, but the Red Rover, a Union Ship, included not only the Sisters of the Holy Cross, but also four African-American women.