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Courtesy SJCHFSt. Katharina KasperThe roots of Fort Wayne’s healthcare can be traced back to a German woman who grew up in poverty in the early 1800s.
Katharina Kasper, who would later become a canonized saint in the Catholic Church, worked labor-intensive jobs to support her parents when she was young, but felt called to a deeper life of service. In 1851, she founded the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, a community of women dedicated to caring for the poor, elderly, orphaned, and widowed.
Though the Poor Handmaids originated in Dernbach, Germany, where many sisters still reside, Kasper’s commitment to go where needs were greatest meant the women were not confined by borders.
A high population of German-speaking immigrants had settled in Fort Wayne, so Bishop John Luers, whose own family had emigrated from Germany when he was a teen, wrote to Kasper in 1868. He requested the Poor Handmaids’ help in caring for German immigrants, widows, and orphans. Kasper agreed, and more than 200 women volunteered to cross the ocean. The eight sisters who were selected arrived in Hessen Cassel that year, becoming the linchpin for a legacy that would reshape community outreach in Fort Wayne.
“The sisters arrived in the United States in August of 1868, and they had almost nothing,” says Meg Distler, executive director of St Joseph Community Health Foundation, which was founded by the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ. “The church where they planned to stay wasn’t able to support all of them. Two stayed in Hessen Cassel, three traveled to Chicago and started an orphanage there, and three came to Fort Wayne, where they eventually founded Fort Wayne’s first hospital.”
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Meg DistlerWhen the sisters first came to Fort Wayne, the commissioners had recently voted not to invest tax dollars in healthcare for the poor – a decision the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend disagreed with. Luers formed the St. Joseph Benevolent Association to raise funds to purchase the bankrupt Rockhill Hotel on the corner of Main Street and Berry Street in Downtown Fort Wayne. He then put it in the name of the Poor Handmaids, allowing them to clean and restore it in preparation for its conversion to a public hospital. The St. Joseph Hospital accepted its first patient in 1869, committed to serving anyone in the community in need of nursing and free healthcare.
“Before the sisters founded St. Joseph Hospital, the only people with access to healthcare were people who had the resources to call doctors to their homes when they were sick,” explains Distler. “People who couldn’t afford to be nursed in their homes were often sent to the poor house to die.”
At the time of its founding, St. Joseph Hospital was the only hospital that offered indiscriminate, public care to all those in need. Fort Wayne City Hospital, which would later become Parkview, was not established until 1879—a full decade later.
For more than 100 years, the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ continued to serve the Fort Wayne community in whatever manner the public demanded. From establishing a nursing school to train nurses in the early 1900s, to operating an orphanage and school for homeless children about a mile from the hospital, the sisters’ willingness to say “yes” shaped the future of healthcare and accessibility in Fort Wayne.
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CourtesyDr Dave Johnson“If you think about it, the Poor Handmaids were busting through glass ceilings before anyone had coined the term,” says Dr. Dave Johnson, a licensed mental health counselor and St. Francis professor who got his start as a nurse under the Poor Handmaids. “Before women even had the right to vote, the Poor Handmaids were basically CEOs of orphanages, hospitals, and educational systems, and they were so humble the world never really recognized they did it.”
A hospital with arms wide open
True to the heart and values of the Poor Handmaids, St. Joseph Hospital was founded on a commitment to welcoming all people, regardless of creed, nationality, color, or ability to pay.
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Dr Joe Muhler“I did my family practice residency at St. Joseph Hospital from 1975 to 1978, and it was clear that everyone knew St. Joe’s arms were wide open,” says Dr. Joseph Muhler, who was a member of the medical staff at the hospital until his retirement in 2015. “The residents were rotated through three hospitals in the area: St. Joe, Lutheran Hospital on Fairfield, and what we now call Parkview Randallia. They were all great hospitals. But it was very obvious to me as a young physician that people in Fort Wayne, especially those who may not have had the assets to pay for healthcare, knew they could go to St. Joe and they wouldn’t be turned away.”
From the beginning, St. Joseph’s firm stance against discrimination and prejudice served as an invitation to anyone in the community who needed care, but the Poor Handmaids’ value didn’t just extend to patients. Through the course of its history, the hospital also welcomed physicians who were unable to practice at other hospitals in the community, including Black doctors and Jewish doctors.
“There was never any segregation at St. Joe,” Distler says. “The Poor Handmaids created a culture where everyone was welcome. When I first started working for the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation, there was a Jewish doctor on the hiring committee. He told me that until the late 1970s, St. Joe Hospital was the only place he was allowed to practice in the community. It’s not so distant in our country’s past that these things were happening — but the Poor Handmaids practiced a better way, and the community benefited from it.”
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A sister with a child at St. Joesph Hospital.
Johnson also recalls the unique environment of the hospital, though his memories started long before he became a nurse and worked in the St. Joe wards himself. Johnson knew of the Poor Handmaids because he was friends with many of the children who lived in the orphanage at St. Vincent’s Villa on Wells Street (today the campus of Headwaters Church). The children were educated alongside Johnson at Precious Blood, which is where he first interacted with them and the sisters.
“Once we got to high school, the sisters often hired us to work in service roles at the hospital,” Johnson says. “I got my start in healthcare when I was about 15 or 16 years old, burning trash and working on the food line in the basement of St. Joe. From the start, there was so much diversity there. The sisters brought together coworkers who had all kinds of backgrounds and spoke many different languages. Their leadership kind of united us all.”
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Sister Julienne Smith visiting with people at the hospital.Johnson says he was inspired by the work ethic of the sisters, who maintained a constant presence in the hospital. Within three years, he was working in the emergency room as an orderly, and he would later go to IPFW to get his nursing degree.
“Sister Shirley Bell was my first nursing supervisor,” Johnson says. “She hired me into the ER. One of the memories from my time there that stands out most is just how influential the sisters were across the entire institution. They were in all the departments, and you could not outwork them. They came early and they stayed late.”
Muhler similarly noticed the dedication of the Poor Handmaids, first as a resident and then in his years of private practice. During his residency at St. Joe, he often worked in the burn unit, which was the only burn unit in the city at the time.
“The sisters were such a presence in the hospital,” Muhler recalls. “They weren’t just the directors or the administrators. They were regularly in the burn unit, not just ministering to patients as nurses but also looking out for their emotional and spiritual needs. When I was in the ER seeing a patient, I’d see the sisters flowing through, monitoring the care being provided in the hospital. I remember when I would make my rounds in the mornings, around 7:30 or 7:45, the hospital intercom would click on and a sister would offer a morning prayer for the patients.”
Through the years of the hospital’s operation under the Poor Handmaids, it was not uncommon to walk the wards and find a sister helping a patient off of a bedpan or giving a sponge bath. The sisters took their vows to service seriously, and this commitment continued even after the hospital was sold to Quorum Health Group in 1998.
The legacy of the Poor Handmaids in Fort Wayne
After the sale of St. Joe, the legacy of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ continued in the form of the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation. While the hospital where the Poor Handmaids began their work was demolished in 2022, the sisters’ influence can still be traced to hundreds of organizations in the community.
In 1998, the Poor Handmaids founded the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation with a $20 million investment. In the nearly 30 years since, the foundation has invested $29 million back into the community through more than 1,900 grants for nearly 300 organizations.
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CourtesyDr. Dungy-Poythress speaks about implicit bias and how it impacts Black maternal and infant health at an event hosted by the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation the University of Saint Francis.
“All grant recipients must demonstrate compassionate programming for vulnerable individuals in our community, which reflects the Poor Handmaids’ heart for service,” says Distler. “Our key impact areas focus on affordable healthcare, prenatal and infant care, nutrition and food insecurity, and refugees and immigrants. Although the Poor Handmaids no longer live in Fort Wayne, their service lives on through the work of their foundation.”
Despite the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation’s significant contributions in Fort Wayne, the foundation’s work often flies under the radar in the community.
“Even after working at St. Joe Hospital for the majority of my career, I was unaware of the presence of the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation until after my retirement,” says Muhler, who now serves as the foundation’s board chair. “I think that says something about the sisters’ legacy. They were never flashy, never focused on recognition, and the people affiliated with the foundation are the same way. They work quietly in the dark corners of the city to make positive change.”
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An Allen County Food Insecurity Nutrition Network (FINN) meeting, supported by St. Joesph Community Health Foundation.
For Johnson, who is a former board chair and current board member for the foundation, he says the influence of the Poor Handmaids shaped his entire career. Their dedication to service and selflessness stands out as a key inspiration throughout his own history.
“I became a nurse because of the Poor Handmaids, and there were so many other nurses that came out of the nursing school they founded,” says Johnson. “We are all pebbles in a pond, influencing healthcare in our community because of the impact the sisters had on us at the beginning. People talk about the still, small voice of God — for many of us, that voice was channeled through a Poor Handmaid.”
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A HEAL Market, supported by St. Joseph Community Health Foundation, helps residents access healthy, fresh food.Today, the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation is a cornerstone for resources and solutions in Fort Wayne. The foundation’s multimillion-dollar investments in the city have reached thousands of people. But if it weren’t for one woman’s courage more than 150 years ago, all the resources, solutions, and investments may never have existed in the first place.
“The entire legacy of our foundation can be traced back to St. Katharina Kasper and her heart for the people around her,” Distler says. “Because she said yes to her calling, others were inspired to say yes, too. They became the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, and they said yes to traveling across the ocean to settle in a small town in the Midwest. That step of faith changed the framework of Fort Wayne. It’s the story of the mustard seed: These few people changed history because of their faith, and I think that invites us to ask ourselves how we can say yes to our community, too. Just a little bit of faith, grit, and determination can create a revolution.”
This story was made possible by support from the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation.