They were, by almost any measure, an extraordinary group of women. Led by Mother Mary Odilia Berger, the five German nuns arrived in St. Louis on November 16, 1872, in search of religious freedom and to do God's work.When they arrived, they had just $5 among them, but they carried the faith and compassion that ultimately would become SSM Health Care.

Battle-tested from caring for soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War, the nuns came to a city in urgent need of their help. That first winter, in the midst of a devastating smallpox epidemic in St. Louis, the sisters took to the streets, begging for money, supplies, food and medicines – anything to ease the suffering. They became known as the “Smallpox Sisters,” a name that would follow them through their earliest days in St. Louis. It was not to be until 1874 that they would receive their formal name, the Sisters of St. Mary (SSM), named for St. Mary of Victories Church, with whom their convent shared a common door.

Five years after their arrival, the sisters borrowed what was then an enormous sum of money, $16,000, to open their first hospital, St. Mary’s Infirmary. Account books from that time identify almost 60 percent of its patients as unable to pay, or “ODL,” a designation that stood for “Our Dear Lord’s.” The following year, in 1878, Mother Odilia sent 13 of the congregation’s sisters to Mississippi and Tennessee to care for the victims of a yellow fever epidemic. Five of them died, all under age 30. Mother Odilia herself would die at age 57 in St. Louis on October 17, 1880, days after the Catholic Church officially recognized the congregation she founded.

In 1894, Sister Mary Augustine Giesen and six other sisters left the congregation and traveled to Maryville, Mo., where they formed a separate religious congregation, the Sisters of St. Francis of Maryville , Mo., (OSF). While the Sisters of St. Mary worked largely in the St. Louis urban area, the Sisters of St. Francis worked in more rural areas. In 1898, they established St. Anthony Hospital, which was the first hospital in the Oklahoma territory. Nearly 90 years later, in 1987, the Sisters of St. Mary and the Sisters of St. Francis would unite to form the Franciscan Sisters of Mary (FSM). The congregation is the sponsor of SSM Health Care.