The Wayside him. In March 1846, the family added a bedroom for their 13-year-old daughter Louisa May Alcott. It was the first room she had to herself. She wrote in her journal, "It does me very good to be alone, and Mother has made it very pretty and neat for me." In this home, Louisa and her sisters lived many of the scenes that later appeared in her book "Little Women" (1868–69), including the amateur plays they performed. She also began writing what would become her first book, "Flower Fables" (1854). Bronson opened the home to many people, including Sophia Foord, a
Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross asked two local women – Pauline LaPlante ( - 1926) and Christine Rousseau ( - 1900) – to come home from their formation with the Dominican Order in Racine, Wisconsin, (about 150 miles south), to teach and provide medical care to the Belgian residents. Sisters LaPlante and Rousseau accepted Father Daems' request. With the help of Sister Pius Doyle and Mary Van Lanen, a neighboring farm girl, the four women became the religious community's founding members. In 1881, the women were officially recognized as a diocesan community by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin, which marked 1868 as