From an antique postcard
What was the deal with Sister Adelia? She lived in Cincinnati for just over a year, created an international sensation, and then faded into history.
Adelia may have come from wealth and may have benefited from a high-class education, but we may never know for certain. Very little of what she said about herself or her family checks out. She was a Catholic nun and had reportedly entered the Order of the Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis as a teenager. Some sources say she abandoned a hefty inheritance to take her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and that her share was redistributed among several stepsisters. All we can document is that Sister Adelia arrived in Cincinnati early in 1908 as a nun and was assigned to the wards as a nurse at St. Francis Hospital in Lick Run.
Throughout that summer she attended a patient named Jacob Walter, a barber hospitalized for several weeks due to an unspecified condition. Walter required extensive care, provided dutifully by Sister Adelia. The Cincinnati newspapers later conjured scenarios out of some dime novel. Here’s the Commercial Tribune [January 20, 1909]:
“Day after day the sister visited the sick man and with each visit his admiration grew for her. Little could he disguise his feelings and he showed by his every word that he was desperately in love with Sister Adelia. One day he thought he saw a strange light in the nurse’s eyes, a light which had never before shone there and which he had never before seen in any woman’s eyes. Yet he instinctively knew that he had awakened a return of affection in the woman whom he loved.”
The Cincinnati Post [January 20, 1909] even invented interior dialogue for the forbidden courtship of the patient and his virginal caretaker:
“He tried to reason the situation out, but his tired, aching limbs would not let him think consecutively. He dozed off. Upon awakening he looked up into the nun’s eyes as she bent over him. At first he thought he was dreaming. She had been in his mind in slumber. ‘You,’ he smiled. The trace of a smile came at the corners of her mouth.”
From "Life Magazine," April 5, 1906, page 431
Jacob Walter was discharged as a patient later that summer and almost immediately put into action a plan that he and Sister Adelia had concocted over his sickbed. On the morning of August 20, 1908, Sister Adelia feigned illness to be excused from chapel, snuck into the hospital kitchen and borrowed street clothing from one of the cooks, then took a streetcar into town to meet her former patient at the county courthouse.
The pair secured a marriage license from acting Probate Judge Almon Mitchell Warner and Deputy Clerk Jacob E. Falk. Walter said he was 29 and a barber born in Cincinnati. Adelia claimed to be 34, born in New York City. Her father, she said, was Conrad Conrady but she offered not a clue as to her mother’s identity. She listed her occupation as a “domestic” at St. Francis Hospital.
Both Jacob and Adelia were Catholic, but marriage in the Church was now out of the question. Neither would consent to having their union blessed by a Protestant minister. A friend of a friend found Hiram C. Bolsinger, a lawyer with offices in the Mercantile Library Building, who also happened to be a Justice of the Peace in Millcreek Township. Bolsinger met the couple at the Duckworth Club on Ninth Street, where he performed the civil rites in one of the club’s parlors. Jacob told the Commercial Tribune:
“My wife and I are very happy and both of us are glad that we have each other. She is the sweetest and best woman in the world.”
Jacob and Adelia set up housekeeping in Cumminsville near the barber shop of William Bernard, where Jacob had a chair. Adelia sought counsel from Father George Schmidt, pastor of St. Boniface Church, who surprised her by offering to take her case to Archbishop Henry K. Moeller and thence to the Vatican. Father Schmidt was so positive a dispensation from Pope Pius could be achieved that Walter and Adelia began to plan for a church wedding. It was not to be.
Adelia again made headlines in July when she left Cincinnati on a train heading for New York City. Neighbors told tales of a troubled household, constant arguments and abusive behavior by Jacob, who had lost his job and refused to work. The couple’s landlady reported that Jacob, brandishing a pistol, had barged into her apartment, looking for his wife and threatening violence. The landlady told the Enquirer [July 24, 1909]:
“Mrs. Walter was a woman of refinement. She was always gentle, but sad. Her husband quarreled frequently with her, but she never answered his abuse.”
Fearing that her husband would discover her plan to abandon him, Adelia packed her belongings into a couple of soap boxes and asked a neighbor, a barkeep at a nearby saloon, to escort her to the Pennsylvania Railroad Depot.
The couple’s landlady told the newspapers that a moving van showed up after Adelia departed to haul away some belongings from their apartment but left behind furniture still being paid off in installment. Jacob Walter was never seen in the neighborhood again. The New York Sun [July 25, 1909] said Adelia’s intent was to return to the convent:
“She says she will seek a reconciliation with her church and attempt to become a nun once more and that she never wants to see her husband again.”
The Enquirer told a different story, claiming that Adelia’s friends (otherwise unidentified) had received a letter from her stating she was welcomed in New York warmly by her stepsisters who had preserved her share of their father’s bequest. Adelia would soon become a wealthy divorcee.
Whether anyone lived happily ever after in this curious little tale is a mystery. The name Conrad Conrady, Adelia’s purported father, appears in only one single document – her marriage license. All evidence suggests that name was a fabrication. The New York and New Jersey archives offer scant evidence for anyone named Conrady during this time period and no Adelias at all. If Adelia or Jacob ever filed for divorce, documentation has yet to surface.
Meanwhile, the good Sisters at St. Francis Hospital soldiered on for another seven decades. The last patient was transferred from the original 1887 building to a new St. Francis/St. George Hospital up the hill in 1982 and the old facility now serves as senior housing.
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