The daughter of Thomas Hansby and Henrietta Morgan Sisk, Anna was born December 9, 1900, in Mortons Gap, Kentucky. After the mother’s death the family was separated. Although the family was not Catholic, relatives placed the three youngest girls at Mount Saint Joseph Academy. Anna was the youngest of the three. Sister Aloysius Willett accepted the little girls, and under her motherly care, they were soon attending religious exercises and rising for early Mass. Anna enjoyed her assigned duty of watering the chickens, a work she kept until she was in high school. Anna was baptized on October 5, 1915. On May 5, 1918, she entered the novitiate at Mount Saint Joseph and on August 05, 1918, received the Ursuline habit and the name Sister Benedict Joseph. Her two sisters had become Ursulines the previous year.
Sister Benedict Joseph prepared for a teaching apostolate and her first assignment was St. Francis of Assisi School in Chicago, Kentucky. Following that assignment, she taught in both public and parochial schools of Kentucky: Calvary, Knottsville, Holy Cross and Peonia. In Nebraska, she taught at Nebraska City and Bow Valley. She was then assigned to Santa Rosa School in Blanco, New Mexico. This was a public school and she remained there for ten years during which she also taught CCD at Bloomfield and Turley. Sister Benedict Joseph’s final teaching mission was Blessed Mother School in Owensboro.
Because of a serious heart condition, Sister Benedict Joseph come home to Mount Saint Joseph on May 1, 1955, for a few days’ rest. On May 10, she was admitted to Mercy Hospital in Owensboro for observation. The nurses found her dead the next morning. Her remains were returned to Mount Saint Joseph. On May 13, 1955, Msgr. Gilbert Henninger, chaplain, offered the funeral Mass. Sister Benedict Joseph’s remains are buried in the convent cemetery. Among her survivors were her two Ursuline sisters, Sister Mary Martin and Sister Angelica.