Mary Eikelmann was born in Westphalia, Germany, on November 10, 1864. The family came to America when she was five years old and settled on a farm in Nebraska. She entered the Clyde community on April 12, 1887, was invested with the religious habit on September 10, 1887, made her first profession of vows on November 17, 1888, and perpetual vows on November 21, 1893.

Sister M. Antonia was the eldest of five sisters who eventually joined our community: Sisters M. Bonaventure, Cunigunda, Salome and Columba. She was a kind, motherly person, very faithful in her religious observances and devoted to the Blessed Sacrament. She was especially zealous for the night hours of adoration.

Sister helped at the orphanage for about eighteen years, and for many years provided the community with delicious homemade bread, at the cost of much labor and self-sacrifice. She was a pioneer member of the Mundelein community and lived there from 1928 to 1931.

Sister was bedfast in the old Clyde infirmary for some time before her death, and went home to God on the feast of the Solemnity of St. Benedict in 1938, at the age of seventy-four.