Catherine was born July 26, 1896, in Mortons Gap, Ky., to Thomas and Henrietta Morgan Sisk. Following her mother’s death, relatives took all the children and placed the three youngest girls at Mount Saint Joseph Academy. Catherine was the oldest of the three and enjoyed the companionship of her two sisters at the Academy. They were not Catholic. When the two younger girls were baptized in 1915, Catherine was still resisting the idea of becoming a Catholic. She wanted to be sure that she understood her responsibilities. Father Louis Hilary Spalding, chaplain, baptized Catherine on March 18, 1917. Once converted, she saw the beauties of religious life. Catherine entered the novitiate and on November 28, 1917, she received the Ursuline habit and the name Sister Mary Martin.
After preparing for teaching, Sister Mary Martin’s first assignment was St. Peter of Alcantara School at Stanley, Ky. Other teaching assignments took her to schools in Kentucky, Indiana, Nebraska, Missouri, and New Mexico. In Kentucky, she taught at Knottsville, Browns Valley, St. Mary, Hardinsburg, Curdsville, Calvary, Shively, Fredericktown and St. Joseph in Owensboro. She taught in Jeffersonville, Ind.; Bow Valley and Nebraska City, Neb.; Wilhelmina, Mo.; and Farmington and Waterflow, N.M. She lived her life very quietly hidden from daily events but she was well loved by her pupils and the Sisters with whom she lived. Because of a chronic heart condition, Sister retired from classroom teaching in 1948 and returned to Mount Saint Joseph.
During her retirement, she helped with the sick until she herself became a patient in the infirmary. In the late afternoon of May 27, 1968, she was rushed to Mercy Hospital in Owensboro but never rallied from a stroke. Sister died on May 30, 1968. Msgr. Albert Thompson, former chaplain, and Father Bernard Powers, chaplain, celebrated the funeral Mass on June 1, 1968. Sister Mary Martin’s remains are buried in the convent cemetery. Among her survivors was her younger sister, Sister Angelica, OSU. Sister Benedict Joseph, OSU, her youngest sister, preceded her in death.