“Started by the proprietress as a counter attraction to the saloons and dance halls, Nellie Cashman’s quarters become a popular rendezvous, and the hostess dispensed cigars and smokes with lavish hospitality, earning the lifelong admiration and respect of her rough and ready guests. They never forgot she was a woman and treated her with the greatest respect, and her entrance into a saloon or dance hall was the signal for every man in the place to stand, due to their high opinion of her.”
— Victoria Daily Times, Jan. 10, 1925, writing about Cashman’s library in the Donovan Hotel in Dawson City
“Of all the individuals who supported the Sisters, Nellie Cashman, an Irish-born woman of extraordinary energy, was the most colourful. Known for her care and compassion, she nevertheless was tough enough to brave the harshest conditions to pursue her quest for gold in the North, travelling by dogsled and snowshoe and sleeping in the wild. She first learned of the Sisters’ proposed hospital in the early 1870s, when she passed through Victoria on her initial excursion to Alaska.
“She took this cause to the Cassiar miners, whom Nellie had rescued from an early death from scurvy, bringing fresh limes to supply vitamin C. During her years in the North, she continued to be a benefactor, and often a cart laden with pillows and comforters was delivered to the hospital in her name. The monument on her grave states she was ‘a friend of the sick and the hungry and to all men’ and praises her heroic apostolate of service among the western frontier miners, truly ‘The Miners Angel.’ ”
— Caring and Compassion, by Darlene Southwell, a history of the Sisters of St. Ann in health care in British Columbia
“There is not a mining camp in the country where she is not known and loved, as her many deeds of charity have endeared her to the heart of all who ever knew her. Nellie has grubstaked many a prospector and knows more about mining in all its branches than many a man who poses as an expert.”
— Women of the Klondike, by Frances Backhouse
“The name of Nellie Cashman was synonymous with warmth and generosity in every mining town from Mexico to Alaska. When she died in the Victoria hospital that she helped to establish, bearded men wept unashamedly. Though records differ as to the date of her birth, her arrival in the New World, even to the colour of her hair, on one fact all heartily concur, that her heart was as large as the great American and Canadian West she conquered with her ever cheerful smile, her indomitable courage, her hand outstretched to any man down on his luck.”
— T.W. Paterson, Daily Colonist, 1968
“Serving Christ in the hard world of his frontier men was no chance choice of Miss Nellie Cashman. It was a call, in faith and love, to live the challenge of the Sermon on the Mount: Love God, and love neighbour for God.
“Jan. 7, 1925. Today is the funeral of a very remarkable woman. The Sisters who knew her deem it a favour to act as mourners at her Requiem Mass in St. Andrews Cathedral and at Ross Bay Cemetery. Her grave is alongside the Sisters’ plot. Her wishes were fulfilled. She had long known the Sisters of St. Ann; she wanted to die with them and be buried with them.
“When this friend of ours was taken very ill in Fairbanks, Alaska, she made every effort to come to Victoria. Here she was visited by Alaskan Sisters who knew her sterling worth. Surrounded by them, she breathed her last. But who is this woman, and what made her remarkable? Her name is Nellie Cashman. No doubt her life will be written, but her greatest praise is that those who know the ways of God say that some day Nellie Cashman will be canonized.”
— Sisters of St. Ann
