 They provided a home for orphans and sheltered the elderly.The sisters took in washing, ironing and mending to care for the “children of the house.”  The organization did not consider "previous condition of servitude a liability for Oblate membership" and eight of the forty women who joined in the antebellum years (1828-1860) had been slaves.By 1910 the sisters conducted schools and orphanages at Baltimore, Washington, Leavenworth, St. Louis, and Normandy, Missouri.