Mother Joseph is in the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, although she is known more for building Providence Academy.
The brick landmark is undergoing a multimillion-dollar restoration effort, as The Columbian reported Wednesday. Sue Vorenberg wrote how the pioneering nun’s architectural and construction skills came together in the Academy.
But some of her cowgirl credentials helped make it possible. The hall of fame has honored more than 200 other women, including pioneers, artists, writers, entertainers, humanitarians, businesswomen, educators, ranchers and rodeo cowgirls.
Mother Joseph checked off several of those boxes.
She embodied some of the more colorful aspects of cowgirl lore; she actually spent time in the saddle, trekking on horseback to remote mining camps. Mother Joseph financed many projects by going on begging missions, often accompanied by a younger and prettier nun.
“There were stories that she used to go down into the mines to get gold dust,” according to a Sister of Providence who taught at the Academy in the 1950s.
That’s because once their shift was over and the miners got back to the surface, “They went right to the saloons,” said the late Sister Lucy St. Hilaire, who’d worked with elderly nuns who knew Mother Joseph.
She even faced down Wild West outlaws, according to “The Bell and the River,” a history of the Sisters of Providence in the West.
The book was written by Sister Mary of the Blessed Sacrament, who was known as Catherine McCrosson when she graduated from Providence Academy.
One trip took Mother Joseph and two companions to a mining town in Idaho. The missionaries noticed that two rough-looking men were keeping an eye on them. The men finally ambled up and asked Mother Joseph if she was afraid to walk around with all that money.
You don’t think we keep that money on us, Mother Joseph countered. “What are express offices for?”
The two men were jailed a few days later for killing a miner, Sister Mary wrote. The nuns immediately headed for an express office and deposited $2,600.
Sister Mary recounted a stagecoach trip that was interrupted by two pistol-waving horsemen. The passengers were ordered out of the coach and told to drop their belongs on the ground. As the bandits went through the luggage, Mother Joseph asked one of them to please give her back her bag: That one, the black one, she said.
Apparently awed by her nerve, Sister Mary wrote, he retrieved the bag and dropped it at her feet. They rifled all the other baggage. But the $200 in Mother Joseph’s carpetbag was safe.
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