STARK COUNTY OHIO - OBIT: MENEGAY, Josephine [Sister Nativity] (d. 1940)
***************************************************************************
OHGENWEB NOTICE:  All distribution rights to this electronic data are
reserved by the submitter.  Reproduction or re-presentation of copyrighted
material will require the permission of the copyright owner.
***************************************************************************
File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Anita Rippel
Anitarippe@aol.com
January 5, 1999
***************************************************************************

AGED NUN DIES AT VILLA MARIA   March 3, 1940
     The chapel bell at Villa Maria Convent, New Bedford, Pa. tolled Tuesday
morning at 10:00 A.M., for the funeral of Sister Nativity, who had rung the
bell for deaths and funerals and weddings for 70 years.
     Sister Nativity died Sunday at 4:00P.M. at the Villa, where she had
served for 72 years. Rain beat against the windows of the convent infirmary.
Beside her bed were her associates, saying the prayers for the dying. Sister
Nativity did not hear them. She had been in a coma for many hours. 
     For the last two years, the nun who, as a couragous young girl, left her
comfortable home at Louisville, Oh. to join the band of French sisters carving
a place for themselves in America, spent most of her time in the convent
hospital.
     Her strength seemed to go after the death, in 1937, of Rt. Rev. Monsignor
Nicholas Franche, chaplin at the convent for over 50 years. At his funeral,
Sister Nativity tolled the bell. She would let no one else climb to the loft
to pull the bell rope.
     As a young girl Sister Nativity ran up and down the steps to the bell
loft. As years passed by the climb had become increasingly difficult. But she
clung to the task with the same devotion she had given her religion. 
     It delighted her to have the graduates come back to the convent to be
married, when she could ring the bell in short, bright claps that spoke of
happiness to come. 
     As a young woman, Sister Nativity, born Josephine Menegay, did a man's
work at the convent in the days when the nuns plowed the fields, cut trees,
and converted the dismal land into a productive farm that helped support the
convent. She turned cobbler and mended shoes, was able to fix and mend
anything. She could paint, hammer and  saw.
     Five years after she joined the Sisters of the Holy Humility of Mary, the
first nun died. She knew all members of the community who died, and she tolled
the bell for the services and the procession to the nearby little graveyard,
where each sister's grave is marked by a plain white cross. 
     At 10A.M. on Tuesday, the bell in the chapel tower tolled again, and
Sister Nativity was carried to that cemetery to join her sisters, She is
survived by two sisters, Mrs. Louise Schillig, of Louisville, and Miss
Virginia Menegay who makes her home with her neice, Mrs. J.A. Dudley in
Louisville.
Taken from the Louisville Herald.   Submitted by  Anita Rippel      


==== OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List ====