The Daughters of Charity National Health System was established in St. Louis in 1986, but its roots extend back to 1633, when St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marrilac founded the Daughters of Charity in France. When, in 1668, Pope Clement IX granted permission for the Daughters to live outside the cloister, the tone for their ministry was set: They would go where they were needed, putting their mission to work in the real world.

In 1809 St. Elizabeth Ann Seton formed the American Daughters of Charity in Emmitsburg, Md. Nineteen years later, in response to westward expansion set in motion with the Louisiana Purchase of 1804, the Daughters journeyed to the frontier in St. Louis, Mo., to provide medical care to settlers. There they established a hospital in a three-room log cabin.

Over the next century and a half, as the need for quality health care grew in the United States, the Daughters dispatched Sisters from St. Louis to existing hospitals in Maryland and New Orleans and eventually opened additional hospitals in California, Maryland, Michigan, and Washington, D.C. In the 1940s the Daughters began sharing services among their hospitals in an effort to bring greater efficiency to their health care ministry. These efforts laid the groundwork for what would become, in 1986, the Daughters of Charity National Health System. By 1999, the year the Daughters joined their health ministry with that of the Sisters of St. Joseph Health System, the DCNHS included nearly 80 hospitals, nursing homes, outpatient clinics, and other health care facilities scattered in 15 states.

The Daughters of Charity at St. Vincent's today

The Daughters of Charity at St. Vincent's, 1950