Founded in Ireland in 1831 by Venerable Mother Mary Catherine McAuley, the Sisters of Mercy made three foundations in Western Pennsylvania. In 1870, the youngest of the three foundations was made in Titusville in the Diocese of Erie. The first Superior, Sister Nolasco Kratzer, had been one of the Pittsburgh Mercy Sisters who served as a nurse during the Civil War.

Sister Nolasco brought a love of the sick and the dying with her to Erie. During the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918, the Sisters of Mercy staffed an emergency hospital at Titusville. Sisters were also sent to East Brady, Greensburg and Dubois to nurse flu victims.

The Sisters of Mercy were no strangers to Dubois. Doctors' Hospital opened there in 1897 and the Sisters visited the facility and assisted as needed. When Doctors' Hospital suffered fire damage in 1909, the doctors turned to the Sisters of Mercy for aid in rebuilding and in administering the hospital. The Sisters assumed ownership in 1910. When a new larger hospital was built in 1915, Sister Camilla Giesey was named the first administrator. A landmark lawsuit during her administration saw the hospital lose state aid, when the courts judged it to be sectarian institution. The Ku Klux Klan had charged the Sisters with trying to influence patients to join the Catholic Church. Sister Camilla faced this challenge by setting up a medical examination center for men called to the Armed Forces in World War I, and in coping with the 1918 flu epidemic, crowding patients into sun porches so as not to deny them hospital care. The Titusville Hospital served the patients well; when its capacity was exhausted, temporary quarters were set up in the public high school. Six Sisters, at the request of the health authorities, took up nursing duties there. Likewise, five other Sisters went to East Brady, Pennsylvania. Similarly in DeLancey, Pennsylvania, the entire parochial school was converted into a hospital where Sisters served. Providentially, not one of the Sister nurses contracted the disease.

Primarily a teaching community until they assumed control of the hospital in 1910, the Erie Mercy Sisters were courageous in learning to be good nurses and administrators, and would not tolerate any deficiency in patient care, as they learned by doing.

When the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas was founded in 1991, the Erie Sisters were one of the founding regional communities. Today they are part of the New York , Pennsylvania , Pacific West Community.

For additional information on the Sisters of Mercy of Erie, please visit their homepage by clicking here.