Category Archives: Civil War

February 12, 2014 · 6:00 am

DCs and Presidents: Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

In honor of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, we continue our series on Daughters of Charity and U.S. Presidents.

Our collections contain no Abraham Lincoln manuscripts, but Lincoln’s papers do contain references to the Daughters of Charity. Here is one, taken from the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress ., It is a letter from Sister Emerentiana Bowden to Lincoln, dated April 23, 1864, thanking Lincoln for pardoning a Union soldier.

Emerentiana Bowden letter to Lincoln 1864

Sister Emerentiana Bowden, letter to Abraham Lincoln, April 23, 1864, page 1 of 2 (Both images courtesy of the Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress)

Bowden letter, page 2

The Library of Congress site also provides a transcription, which reads as follows:

St Matthew’s Academy
Cor. 18th & N. York Avenue
Washington, D. C.
April 23rd, 1864.
Respected Sir
Accept our heartfelt thanks for the Pardon of John Connor, prisoner in Fort Delaware, which, at our instance, you were so kind as to grant yesterday. You will ever have the prayers & blessing of the afflicted wife & four almost starving children whom you have relieved, and I might say, restored to life, by restoring to them, through their Father, the means of subsistence.

May He upon whom we must all call for pardon be ever propitious to you, prays

Yours Very Respectfully,
Sister Emerentiana Bowden
Sister of Charity.

Lincoln’s order for pardoning John Connor appears in Volume 7, p.309 of the collected works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler. From Basler, we know that Lincoln was pardoning Connor for desertion.

The thank-you letter is written from St. Matthews Academy in Washington, DC. Sr. Emerentiana was missioned there in 1860. We do not know the precise connection between Sr. Emerentiana and Connor’s family. Perhaps Connor’s children were pupils at St. Matthew’s Academy. Perhaps she knew the family through their parish. Perhaps she met the family in the course of visiting the poor, which the Sisters often did when they weren’t doing their official duties. Sadly, the full story has been lost to history.

Here’s what we do know about Sr. Emerentiana Bowden:
Community name: Sr. Emerentiana Bowden
Baptismal name: Elizabeth
Father’s name: John Bowden
Mother’s name: Henrietta Derby
Born in Ireland, January 26, 1817 (some community sources say 1821). We do not know when she came to the United States.
Vocation date February 19, 1837
Vow date: March 25,1839
Her Missions
1840: St. Ann’s School, Pottsville, PA
1843: St. Francis Xavier’s School for Little Boys, Emmitsburg, MD
1844: St. John’s Free School and Asylum, Frederick, MD
1845: St. Patrick’s Asylum, Rochester, NY
1850: St. Joseph’s School, Washington, DC
1851: St. Joseph’s Central House, Emmitsburg, MD
1852: St. Peter’s School and Asylum, Wilmington, DE
1853: St. Joseph’s Central House, Emmitsburg, MD
1856: St. Joseph’s Asylum and School, Richmond, VA
1857: St. Vincents Home and School, Washington, DC
1860: St. Matthews School, Washington, DC
1865: St. Peter’s House, Lowell, MA
1869: St. Joseph’s Central House, Emmitsburg, MD

Sister Emerentiana left the community in 1870. We have no information on what became of her after she left the Daughters of Charity.

For more about Lincoln and the Daughters of Charity see our November 9, 2013 blog post.

Abraham Lincoln and the Daughters of Charity

Abraham Lincoln

While we have no original Lincoln materials in our collection, Lincoln’s surviving papers do contain a few references to the Daughters of Charity.

There is one known Lincoln letter to a Daughter of Charity, dated September 22, 1862 from Lincoln to Sister Mary Carroll of Providence Hospital requesting services of a Catholic Chaplain for hospitalized soldiers. The original letter resides in a private collection.

Lincoln signed the Acts of Incorporation for two Daughter of Charity institutions in Washington, DC: St. Ann’s Infant Asylum (March 3, 1863) and Providence Hospital (April 8, 1864). Our collection does not include the original documents for either institution.

The correspondence of Mother Ann Simeon Norris (provincial superior of the DC Province of the United States during the Civil War) contains a letter from Mother Ann Simeon to Congress, December 8, 1864, asking that the Sisters’ habit material be imported free from duty. In the letter, she notes that she had written to Lincoln about the matter, that Lincoln had replied that he would support such a measure but that it would require an act of Congress. Lincoln’s actual reply to Mother Ann Simeon does not survive. It is not in our collection nor is it listed in any standard collection of Lincoln’s letters. Legislation was introduced in the Senate which would have remitted the import duties paid by the Sisters, but it did not reach Lincoln’s desk. See our June 7, 2013 blog post for an image of Mother Ann Simeon’s letter and history of the legislation.

The Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress contain two letters concerning Daughters of Charity. Images and transcriptions of both items are available online.

1. Letter of William A. Hammond, Surgeon General, to Lincoln, July 16, 1862, concerning Catholic and Protestant nurses: … “I think it is a fact that the Catholic nurses predominate. This is because we found in the Sisters of Charity, a corps of faithful, devoted and trained nurses ready to administer to the sick & wounded No such organization exists among the Protestants of this country, and those whom we have employed cannot compare in efficiency and faithfulness with the Sisters of Charity. The latter are trained to obedience, are of irreprochable moral character and most valuable are their ministrations …”

2. Letter of Sister Emerentiana Bowden to Lincoln, April 23, 1864, thanking Lincoln for pardoning a Union soldier.

Further online resources for the study of Abraham Lincoln:
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler – online version of the multi-volume book originally published in 1953 by the Abraham Lincoln Association, of Springfield, IL. This is the standard scholarly edition of Abraham Lincoln’s surviving correspondence.

The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln

Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana at the Library of Congress