On February 21, students from St. Peter’s Catholic School in Columbia, SC, laid flowers at the headstone of Mother Baptista Lynch in St. Peter’s Cemetery adjacent to the school.
The Mother Superior of an Ursuline Convent School protected 200 young girls who were forced to flee the boarding school during the Civil War burning of Columbia. Mother Baptista and her students hid in St. Peter’s Cemetery overnight. The next morning, she saved the Hampton-Preston from being burned by the Union Army.
Mother Baptista’s story is told in a new children’s book Fire and Forgiveness: A Nun’s Truce with General Sherman. The author, Martha Dunsky, read portions of the book to 1st through 6th graders inside St. Peter’s Church, before they laid flowers at the nun’s headstone.
At a presentation inside the school, Dunsky and the students discussed how to be a peacemaker, which is the book’s message. Joining Dunsky was Monica Wyrick, the book’s illustrator and art teacher at St. Peter’s School.
