From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fanny Margaret Allen (November 13, 1784-1819) was a Roman Catholic nun. Born in Burlington, Vermont, Allen was the eldest child of Ethan Allen with his second wife, Frances Montresor Brush Buchanan Allen. Fanny was only four years old when her famous father died. In 1807, she went to Montreal to study French, where she subsequently converted to Catholicism in contrast to the fact that her father had been a theist. As tradition relates it, her conversion was based on a supernatural experience, and she became a nun in the Religious Hospitaliers of St. Joseph - the first woman of New England birth to become a nun. She spent the rest of her life nursing the sick and indigent, notably in the War of 1812. Fanny died of consumption in 1819, at the age of thirty-five. The Fanny Allen Hospital in Colchester, Vermont, run by her order, the Sisters of St Joseph, was named in her honor.
[edit] External Links
