Category Archives: U.S. Presidents

November 22, 2013 · 1:00 am

Daughters of Charity and the Kennedy Assassination

Kennedy motorcade

President Kennedy’s motorcade passes by a group of spectators in downtown Dallas. The Daughter of Charity cornette can be seen in the foreground. The names of the Sister and the photographer are unknown.

November 22, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. At the time the Daughters of Charity had a thriving presence in Dallas, including health care ministry at St. Paul Hospital (they never ministered at Parkland), social work ministry at Marillac Social Center, and school ministry at Holy Trinity Parish. A large group of children from Holy Trinity School, accompanied by the Sisters and by their pastor, Father Oscar Huber, C.M., witnessed the motorcade that day. Standing at the corner of Lemon and Throckmorton, one Sister who was there later recalled waving to Kennedy as the motorcade passed. Later that day Father Huber would administer the Last Rites to Kennedy at Parkland Hospital.

Father Oscar Huber is buried here, at the Vincentian cemetery at St. Mary's of the Barrens in Perryville, Missouri. He died in 1975.

Father Oscar Huber is buried here, at the Vincentian cemetery at St. Mary’s of the Barrens in Perryville, MO. He died in 1975.

Additional resources about November 22, 1963

For more on Father Huber’s involvement with the events of November 22, 1963, see: Patrick Huber, “Father Oscar Huber, the Kennedy Assassination, and the News Leak Controversy: A Research Note”. Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 110, Number 3, January 2007, pp. 380-393

See the website of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza for online exhibits and other materials about the Kennedy assassination.

The November 20 issue of the Des Moines (IA) Register carried a story about Kennedy which includes a picture of Kennedy taken by a Daughter of Charity, Sister Angela Fitzgibbon. Sister Angela died in 1997.

The November 2013 issue of D Magazine includes a photo essay with images of the city of Dallas before and after JFK’s death. One image shows three Daughters of Charity praying at the Grassy Knoll. The image of the Sisters comes from Bettman-Corbis, not from our collection.

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Filed under John F. Kennedy, U.S. Presidents, Vincentians

November 19, 2013 · 3:00 am

Abraham Lincoln and the Daughters of Charity

Abraham Lincoln

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

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Filed under Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, U.S. Presidents

January 15, 2013 · 1:17 pm

DCs in Spanish American War (2)

DCs in Spanish American War (2)

(Photograph reproduced with permission of Daughters of Charity Provincial Archives)
The Daughters of Charity so often get credit for nursing in the Civil War that their work in other conflicts is overshadowed. Previously, we posted a photograph of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, temporarily quarantined at Camp Wikoff, Montauk Point on Long Island, New York, upon their return from action in the Spanish American War. Today, we highlight another treasure that underscores the Daughters as nurses at this same hospital: a stereoscope photograph showing, at left, a Daughter speaking with President William McKinley (right) who visited Camp Wikoff on Sept. 10, 1898. Between them is McKinley’s Secretary of War, Russell Alger. Although the sister is unidentified, it’s tempting to think that it might be Sr. Adelaide who, when asked by McKinley what the sisters might need, told him more orderlies. Forty were sent in the following day. All told, 201 Daughters of Charity nursed at eleven hospitals during the Spanish American War; 110 of them eventually served at Camp Wikoff. Of those sisters, four (Sr. Anastasia, Sr. Mary Elizabeth, Sr. Mary and Sr. Mary Agnes) died of exposure to typhoid fever brought home by their patients. This photograph is part of the collection that recently arrived in the Provincial Archives from Albany. Some of the details of the Daughters’ work at Camp Wikoff were taken from Sr. Gertrude Fenner’s 1949 thesis “The Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in the Spanish American War,” APSL (formerly ASJPH) 10-1-6-#3.

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Filed under Ministries, Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. Presidents, William McKinley