Life History

Notes

• Was a nurse  - Died young of TB - In Wisconsin
  
  From Rachael Hanel:
  I have a picture of Agnes Zimny , and also a picture (postcard) which shows her standing in front of a building. Someone had written on there, “the hospital.” There’s another picture of a building underneath that, and it’s written “Nurses home.”  The hospital picture matches a picture of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Marshfield, Wis.
  
  I did some Internet research on that hospital and found it was run by the same nuns that ran St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Wabasha – the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother. So I’m sure Agnes just grew up in the orphanage and was shuttled then to nursing school in Marshfield, which was probably the order’s central location/hospital. I’m kind of wondering if perhaps she actually was a nun, a nursing nun? I wonder if nun nurses wore habits or nursing uniforms. The pictures I have of Agnes shows her in a nursing uniform.
  
  Thank goodness your dad said something about Grandpa visiting Agnes in Wisconsin! I had no idea she ended up there. I also checked, and sure enough, the Chicago/Northwestern railroad ran through Marshfield. I’m sure Grandpa was taking the cattle to markets in Milwaukee or Chicago.
  
  Agnes was the oldest in that family. Grandpa left North Dakota pretty much when he was 18, my mom said. So if he visited Agnes when he was 16 or 17, that would have been 1928/1929. I think she would have been born around 1908 or so. She was probably only around 20 when she died. Nursing schools back then were probably only a year or two, and she might have already entered school when she was 16.
  

Sources

• 1. 1920 United States Federal Census
  • Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2005