By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
(Editor’s note: This is the first article in a two-part series about the traumatic gunshot cases at the old Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City during the first decade after the Holy Cross Sisters founded it 150 years ago.)
The Holy Cross Sisters first arrived in Utah from their convent in Notre Dame, Indiana on June 6, 1875. Sister Raymond (Mary) Sullivan and Sister Augusta (Amanda) Anderson traveled to Salt Lake City via train and stagecoach at the invitation of Father Lawrence Scanlan (soon to be Utah’s bishop).
Scanlan hoped the good order of sisters—originally from France but soon full of hardworking and devoted Irish Catholic nuns—would help him build schools and meet other local human and spiritual needs.
An Irish woman named Sister Holy Cross (Susan) Walsh and several others arrived soon after the first two. With their trademark energy and industriousness, in just a few months they started St. Mary’s Academy and St. Mary’s Hospital (later known as Holy Cross Hospital) in Salt Lake.
Battle-tested nuns like Sister Holy Cross were ready to face these daunting challenges due largely to their experiences as Civil War nurses. As Sister Augusta wrote in her journal, “We were not trained as nurses, but our hearts made our hands willing, with God’s help we did much to alleviate the dreadful suffering.”
By the end of the Civil War, about 80 Holy Cross sisters had served as wartime nurses. They helped start the nursing profession as we know it today, with a strict focus on proper staffing, sterile conditions, and using the right equipment and supplies.
That exposure, training, and discipline no doubt helped the Sisters cope with the traumatic stories that unfolded in their small Salt Lake City Hospital after they opened it in 1875. Many of those stories involved exactly what you’d expect to hear about in the wild Old American West—gunfights.
Revenge of the snitch
In late 1880, rancher Peter Brannen drove his cattle to Mount Pleasant in Central Utah for winter grazing. With the cattle content in the fields, Brannen passed the time by playing poker and drinking in a nearby saloon.
When local law enforcement decided to crack down on illegal gambling, they deputized a saloon employee named Hambrick to help. Soon after, in early 1881, officers arrested Brannen and some of his fellow card players.
After paying his fine, Brannen and his friends fingered Hambrick as “the cuss or stinker who gave us away.” When Hambrick responded with profane denials, everyone pulled out their guns and started shooting.
As the bullets flew, Brannen ducked behind the bar while Hambrick grabbed a rifle and took aim. When Brannen peeked out, Hambrick shot him in the face.
A doctor rushed Brannen to the Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City by train. The medical staff saved him but, Brannen spent several months recovering.
The last news report I read about the incident said Brannen likely would never speak again.
Stop fiddlin’ around
Certain saloon customers in the Old West apparently disliked fiddle players even more than they despised deputized snitches.
In October 1883, cowboy William Stokes and a friend strolled into a dance hall near American Falls, Idaho. Ruben Wilson was on stage playing the fiddle with a band.
After several drinks, Stokes told Wilson in no uncertain terms that he did not like his fiddle playing. Apparently wanting more upbeat music, he told Wilson to “sling yourself lively.”
Wilson took offense and the two men went outside to debate things further. An altercation broke out and Stokes shot Wilson twice.
Friends rushed Wilson to Holy Cross Hospital in Utah by train. The Holy Cross Sisters and medical staff nursed his wounds as much as possible, but Wilson died anyway a few months later on March 7, 1884.
After the gunfight, Stokes fled on horseback to Pocatello and then to Ogden, where sheriffs arrested him before he could abscond to Pueblo, Colorado. An Idaho jury convicted him of manslaughter in July 1884.
A judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison, where he had lots of time to reconsider how he expressed his musical preferences.
A wound beyond belief
Another train ride from Idaho brought a railroad worker to Holy Cross Hospital in October 1882 with a gaping shoulder wound said to be “beyond belief” and larger than a man’s hand.
Doctors wondered if he’d been shot with a cannonball. He hadn’t, but the story of the wound’s origin turned out to be at least as interesting than its unusual size.
A day or so earlier, the worker had left his railroad camp in southern Idaho to walk to town and cash some checks. Two newcomers to the camp joined him on the trek, but on the way home they shot him from behind with a Henry rifle and robbed him.
The thieves were about to finish him off, one saying, “If I don’t kill you it will make for more trouble.” Yet, the quick-witted victim convinced them they’d be worse off facing a murder charge than a mere robbery accusation.
They agreed, left him alive and alone, and fled.
The rail worker somehow managed to stumble back to camp and tell his tale. His enraged fellow workers rode off and caught the thieves. Exacting some frontier justice, the ad hoc posse hung them on the spot.
The clever railroad worker survived and recovered nicely under the kind and watchful eyes of the Holy Cross Sisters.
A grudge of old standing
When John Welch arrived at Holy Cross Hospital in July 1883 with a bullet wound in his leg, he told the Sisters it resulted from “a grudge of old standing.”
He said he’d been sitting in front of a Bingham saloon next to a livery stable when he felt a strange sensation in his ear. He then realized a man named Mike Fitzgerald had whacked him with a club.
Fitzgerald then shot him in the leg. They fought, Welch got hold of the gun, and Fitzgerald disappeared. Welch blamed the scuffle on a dispute over playing cards.
The rumor mill, however, reported they’d been fighting about a woman. It’s unclear whether either one got the girl.
Boarding house blues
Also during July 1883, Daniel Fitzgibbons and Redmond Royce returned to their Salt Lake City boarding house after a night of carousing. Home, but still drunk, they got into a loud argument.
The boarding house owner evicted them on the spot. Royce stumbled upstairs to gather his things and threatened to throw Fitzgibbon’s stuff out of the window. Fitzgibbons angrily threatened violence from the bottom of the stairs.
An enraged Royce appeared at the top and shot him. Fitzgibbons stumbled out of the house and later died at Holy Cross Hospital. Royce was arrested.
Neither the boarding house nor a local newspaper mourned the losses. The newspaper bluntly explained that both were known as “bad men of the roughest type.”
Getting off track
When Ormus Nay—while recovering from bullet wounds in Holy Cross Hospital in January of 1883—was accused of trying to rob a train, his loyal wife Louisa wrote to a Utah newspaper and proclaimed his innocence.
Nay and a gang of other men were accused of covering their faces with bandanas and trying to rob a train north of Wendover in eastern Nevada. Train security agents valiantly fought off the attack, however, forcing Nay’s gang to flee.
Local law enforcement hastily assembled a posse and chased after the would-be-bandits. They cornered the desperadoes near a steep ridge.
After a gunfight, a wounded Nay surrendered. Detectives brought him by train to Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City for treatment.
The story made national headlines. Nay was extradited to Nevada where a jury convicted him of attempted robbery. A judge then sentenced Nay to 14 years in jail.
A few years later, a notice appeared in Salt Lake newspapers. Poor loyal Louisa had filed for divorce.
The most shocking gunfight
Despite the unusual nature of these hospital visits, nothing quite prepared the Holy Cross Sisters for one of the most shocking gunfights in Salt Lake City history in September 1880. Stay tuned for the next blog for that story.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
