Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities

The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia are a women's religious congregation of the Franciscan Third Order Regular founded in 1855 by Maria Anna Boll Bachmann, an immigrant from Bavaria.

Bachmann was a mother with three children and one on the way, when her husband, Anthony, was killed during anti-immigrant unrest in Philadelphia, stirred up by the American Nativist Party.

[1] With the assistance of Bishop John Neumann, In April 1855 Bachmann, her sister, Barbara Boll; and Anna Dorn, a secular Franciscan residing at the hospice, founded a new religious community,[2] with Bachmann named superior and given the name Sister Mary Francis.

In the mid-nineteenth century, many German and Irish immigrants worked on the Erie and Oswego canals, the railroad, or for salt producers.

In 1866 Mother M. Bernardina, founder of the Order of St. Francis in Syracuse, founded St. Elizabeth's Hospital in West Utica .

[4] Cope was Superior General of the congregation when in 1883, in response to a plea for help from King Kalākaua of Hawaii, she led a group of sisters to Honolulu, where they helped develop the medical infrastructure in Hawaiʻi and care for persons suffering leprosy on the island of Molokaʻi.

[5] Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia were also sent to Buffalo, New York in response to the plea of the Redemptorist priests to serve the people of the rapidly growing city.

[6] In 1902, the sisters established St. Francis Home for the Aged on 83 acres of donated farmland in Gardenville, New York.

[7] Also known as the "Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis", a number of sisters from the Buffalo house came to New York City to assist Father John Christopher Drumgoole at his homes for newsboys at Lafayette Place and the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin at Mount Loretto on Staten Island.

[10] The congregation opened hospitals, ran volunteer programs, and operated Mount Alvernia High School for 75 years.

[15] The Stella Maris Retreat Center on the shore of Skaneateles Lake was closed in 2014, as fiscally unsustainable; the property was subsequently sold.