Long Overdue Gratitude to the Oblate Sisters of Providence

The cholera epidemic of 1832 that swept through Baltimore killed 1% of the city’s population, which translated into 800 deaths.  The Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s, Mother Seton’s community, received recognition and gratitude for its work and service.  Another community of sisters did not receive their gratitude for a very, very long time, purely because they were Black.

The Oblate Sisters of Providence were the first community of African American women religious in the United States.  Founded by Venerable Mother Mary Lange and counting among its first band of members Sister Theresa Maxis Duchemin, a student of Mother Seton’s school, the Oblate Sisters primarily came from and ministered to the free African American community in the Baltimore area.

The Calverton Almshouse was one of the great horror sites of the epidemic.  The Sisters of Charity labored in one room providing comfort to the dying, while the Oblate Sisters labored in another; segregation prevented a more efficient and effective method of care.  Yet, despite this practice, when Archbishop James Whitefield contracted the disease, he called upon the Oblate Sisters rather than the Sisters of Charity, who held the official mandate for care granted by the Archdiocese. 

Despite facing the same horrors, and each community losing Sisters to cholera in the epidemic, the accounts in the Daughters’ Archives fail to mention the work of their Oblate companions.  Only in 2023 did the city of Baltimore extend an official recognition of gratitude to the Oblate Sisters. 

While better late than never is certainly true, it is our hope that all be recognized in their own times and to see the completeness of the work of God’s Church and every soul that forms it.