Fanny Allen Hospital

In 1894, the Catholic Bishop of Vermont, Bishop John S. Michaud, was gifted a large parcel of land on the Colchester-Essex border overlooking the Winooski River, upon which stood Dunbar’s Hotel. Coincidentally, the donor of the land, Michael Kelly, had been Mary Fletcher’s personal servant, to whom she had bequeathed $10,000. The bishop wanted to establish a Catholic hospital for the care of the elderly and the indigent on that site. He asked the Religious Hospitallers to send a team down from Montreal to manage it. The order’s superior, Mother Bonneau, was aware that this land had once been part of the Onion River Land Company’s holdings, of which Fanny Allen’s father had been a proprietor. Adjoining that parcel was a farm owned by Fanny Allen’s stepfather, and later by Michael Kelly. These remarkable coincidences and connections persuaded the sisters to take on the challenge of running the hospital and led to its naming in memory of their beloved Vermont-born sister.