Long before the mainstream medical community embraced hospice care and during a time when some doctors still thought cancer was contagious, Rosary Hill Home was founded in 1901. The main property is a fifty-four-bed palliative care facility in Hawthorne, New York for terminally ill cancer patients. It first began in the Manhattan Lower East Side apartment of Rose Hawthorne (Mother Mary Alphonsa), daughter of the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who said, “We cannot cure our patients, but we can assure the dignity and value of their final days, and keep them comfortable and free of pain.” The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne preside over the homes in New York, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. They provide spiritual, physical, and emotional care to all of their patients. Although they are Catholic nuns, they accept both men and women of all creeds, without discrimination.