Women’s History Month: Mother Theodore and mosquitoes

In Cincinnati, Mother Theodore Guerin and her companion-sisters found a blood-thirsty mob. She humorously writes:

“We were far from supposing that, in the midst of the city where we had been so well received, we were to find a multitude of enemies athirst for the blood of the French. Until then we had not fought unto the shedding of blood, but this was a night of slaughter. I may say without boasting too much that several of my enemies perished by my hands, but I was sorely wounded. All my Sisters, except Sister Basilide, bore the glorious scars which proved that they, too, had undergone a bloody battle with the mosquitoes.”

Abraham Lincoln, when he fought in the Black Hawk War, had a very similar account of these vicious bloodsuckers! Click here to read Lincoln’s story.