Religious Women's Roles in Utah's Early Hospitals: A Tale of Two Faiths

Photo of Holy Cross Hospital circa 1883.

In an article in the Utah Historical Quarterly, Colleen McDannell explains the history behind two Salt Lake Hospitals founded by women in the later nineteenth century.

“In the 1870s Utah, Latter-day Saint and Catholic leaders separately called on women to expand their traditional healing roles in order to facilitate the settlement of the territory.  While the resulting hospitals often are mentioned as evidence of women’s social and cultural participation outside of the home, historians have not looked at how the two institutions differed. Or, for that matter, what constituted their early histories. In Salt Lake City, Latter-day Saint women founded Deseret Hospital and Catholic Sisters of the Holy Cross founded Holy Cross Hospital.  As a historian of American religion, I was curious about why one of them flourished and one closed after a decade of sporadic operation.  The disparate outcome, I argue, resulted partially from how each group of women (and their respective faith traditions) understood the place of women in a modernizing world.”

Colleen McDannell, “Deseret Hospital, Women, and the Perils of Modernization,” Utah Historical Quarterly 91( 2023), 93-112.