A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Martha, Sister, (Anne Biget)
MARTHA, SISTER, (ANNE BIGET,)
Was born on the 26th. of October, 1748, at Thoraise, a pleasant village situated on the Doub, near Besancjon. Her parents were poor, hard-working country folks. From infancy she showed an uncommonly tender and kind disposition; always wishing to aid those who were in any distress; ever willing to share her dinner with the beggar or the wayfarer. At the age to be placed in some service, she petitioned and obtained the situation of tourière sister in the convent of the Visitation. This monastic establishment had been founded by the Baroness of Chartal; it was chiefly intended as an asylum for young ladies of high birth, who needed a protecting refuge, or whose piety urged them to withdraw from the world; but as the delicate education and habits of such ladies would render them inadequate to many rough duties essential to every household, the convent received poor girls from the families of peasants and petty artizans, who had been used from childhood to labour and fatigue. In this capacity Anne Biget was received. Upon pronouncing her tows, she took the name of Sister Martha, a name ever to be remembered among the benefactors of misery. The Archbishop of Besançon pave her permission to visit the prisons, and she devoted herself to the wretched tenants with enthusiasm, when the breaking out of the revolution filled them with a different and still more miserable order of inhabitants. During the reign of terror. Sister Martha, her convent destroyed, her companions dispersed, remained faithful to her vocation. She still comforted the prisoners, now prisoners of war; she dressed their wounds, applied to the charitable throughout the town, for the means of affording them necessary comforts; they were as her children, so active, so devoted was her zeal in their behalf during a series of years. Spaniards, Englishmen, Italians, all in turn experienced her tender cares. When the French soldiers who were accustomed to her care were wounded, and away from home, they would exclaim, "Oh I where is Sister Martha? If she were here, we should suffer less.' When the allied sovereigns were in Paris, they sent for Sister Martha, and bestowed valuable gifts upon her. Medals were sent her, at different times, from the Emperor of Russia and from the Emperor of Austria. Nor was her benevolence confined to the soldiers alone; the poor, the suffering of every description, resorted to Sister Martha, and never in vain. In 1816 she visited Paris, to obtain succours for her poor countrymen suffering from a scanty harvest, and consequent scarcity of food. She was very graciously received by Louis the Eighteenth, and the giddy butterflies of the court vied with each other in attentions and caresses to the poor nun. Sister Martha finished a life employed in good works in 1824, at the age of seventy-six.