The daughter of Sam and Arlee Ballew Rogers, Nila was born September 22, 1891, in Owensboro, Ky. She attended St. Frances Academy during her grade school years and spent her high school years at Mount Saint Joseph Academy, graduating from there in June 1911. After spending a year at home, Nila entered the novitiate at Mount Saint Joseph and on November 21, 1912, she received the Ursuline habit and the name Sister Madeline.
Sister Madeline taught the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades at Mount Saint Joseph Academy, and then spent a year teaching at St. Michael School in Fairfield, Ky., her only assignment away from the Motherhouse.
Ill with tuberculosis, Sister Madeline returned to Mount Saint Joseph, became an infirmary patient, and made her final profession of vows in the infirmary on May 28, 1915. A burning fever consumed her strength and after days of intense suffering, Sister Madeline breathed her last on August 20, 1915. Father Louis Hilary Spalding, MSJ chaplain, offered the Requiem Mass and following this, Sister Madeline was laid to rest in the convent cemetery.