 Upon the departure of the two canonesses, Bishop Rappe turned to Sister Angela Bissonnette, an Ursuline novice, to help him guarantee the continuation of his project.He knew and trusted Sister Angela due to her service to the local community in the years before she had entered the convent.She had been active in the catechetical instruction of the local Catholic children, and in a cholera outbreak of 1849, she had gathered and nursed widows and children suffering from the disease in an abandoned house until the plague had passed.