| Linking the past, to the present, for the future

February 5, 2024 · 11:31 am

Pioneers: Estelle Howard at Providence Hospital, Washington

Today we would like to highlight a pioneer at one of the Daughters largest and longest-lived institutions, Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C. When Estelle Howard arrived at Providence to begin her career as a nurse, she became one of the first two Black nurses to work at the hospital. She would spend the next 43 years at Providence, garnering a number of other pioneering firsts during her time there.

It was 1947 when Sister Rita Voss called the Freedman’s Hospital Nursing School and asked for the best two students in the graduating nursing class. No white hospital had ever made such a request of Freedman’s before.

Expecting an interview, the two nurses were hired on the spot and asked if they were ready to work. In 1951, Ms. Howard became head of a segregated ward, but as units desegregated, she became the first Black head nurse of an integrated unit. She later rose to the ranks of Assistant Director of Nursing and Control Coordinator of the Emergency Unit.

Among her other accomplishments, roles, and titles at the job were those of a reporter for the employee newsletter and leadership positions in the District of Columbia’s Nurses Association.

In 1982, for her pioneering role and years of dedicated service, Ms. Howard was the inaugural winner of the Sr. Anne Robb Award, given to those who have shown dedication to Providence Hospital, above average performance and achievements, and perseverance in the face of difficulties. Even after this lifetime achievement award, she served for another eight years at the hospital. In her presentation of the award, Sister Irene Kraus called her “a model of a person who focuses on the good in life and people and refuses to be embittered or to respond in kind when she meets unkindness … Miss Howard has the unique ability over the years to be loyal and supportive of those she has worked with at every level.”

Estelle Howard and Sister Irene Kraus in 1982, when Ms. Howard received the Sister Anne Robb Award

Estelle Howard retired after exactly 43 years at Providence on April 23, 1990. The hospital proclaimed it Estelle Louise Howard Day. Her work made it possible for many others to pursue their career as they desired and to make nursing and the Hospital better for its administrators, doctors, nurses, and patients. Even after her retirement, she continued to volunteer at the hospital.

Estelle Howard in 1990, near her retirement

Estelle Howard’s story is documented in the Archives through the various employee newsletters, photo collections, and a profile written about her in 1990, but we are also fortunate enough to have a copy of a life story that she wrote “And Now My Time at Bat Remembering” in 1999. Although it is but a few brief pages, it allows her to tell her story in her own words and as she wished to, with deep reverence for her immediate and extended family and for the elder family members who can preserve and pass on Black family history. It documents her ancestors’ leaving Alabama during the Great Migration and the forces growing up that shaped her life, including the town library, the Great Depression, and stories of family history in Louisiana.

The St. Joseph’s Needlework Collection

When Mother Seton started St. Joseph’s School (later Academy) in 1810, she made it a point to include the very practical skill of needlework into her curriculum for the young girls who attended the School. Many of these needleworks survive in the archival collections of the Daughters from across the span of the 19^th century.

The incorporation of needlework into the curriculum served to teach skills in the arts, religious instruction, the beginnings of basic literacy, and practical skills for 19^th century feminine life that prepared the girls to be proper 19^th century women. Many of the needleworks in the collection combine multiple mediums, with a background painted in watercolor and the silk embroidered on top of it, as with this piece shown below by Margaret Ann Cappeau (began her studies in 1826).

For literacy and instruction in religion, many students started with basic letters and numbers. When they had mastered these tasks, they advanced on to stitching out verses of scripture. Mother Seton even helped her daughter Catherine with her needlework and early learning on this front.

In addition to being records of the curriculum of the Academy, the needlepoints also serve as some of the earliest records of the evolution of the School’s campus. A common subject of the needleworks is a depiction of the school itself, and, in the era before photography was invented or common, the images created by the students provide the earliest visual records of how the campus grew and evolved.

Other needleworks contain stories of their own. Belle Barranger began creating the largest needlepoint in the collection on the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg, when the School was evacuated and temporarily closed as both the Union and Confederate armies marched through town. As she tried to finish St. Patrick and his destruction of the serpents, she did not have time to finish the serpent itself! As the piece passed from one generation of her family to the next, so too did the story and what it represented, until her descendants, still knowledgeable of the Daughters, donated it back to them for posterity after their mother’s death.

These samplers were common in Maryland and have a distinctive style. Today, they are exceedingly rare and valuable, with the Daughters of Charity collection being one of the largest, with nearly 40 samplers dating from 1812 to 1940. Many of the samplers from the collection are currently on display in the Seton Shrine Museum through the end of 2024. They can be viewed both as beautiful pieces of artwork or as pieces of documenting the history of education in Emmitsburg.

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Filed under Artifacts, Education, Emmitsburg, Exhibits, St. Joseph's Academy

Tagged as Daughters of Charity, Emmitsburg, Needlework, St. Joseph's Academy

December 19, 2023 · 9:05 am

Teddy Roosevelt’s Christmas Cards

The Daughters of Charity have had histories with many United States Presidents, but perhaps no stranger one is reflected in the Archives than the one with President Teddy Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt first became acquainted with the Daughters at Montauk Point Camp on Long Island. Colonel Roosevelt, a New Yorker from the New York City-Long Island area, passed through on his way to the Spanish-American War, with the Daughters nursing at stateside camps in 1898.

In 1902, President Roosevelt was visiting Indianapolis, when he suffered from an abscess in his leg. Sister Regina Purtell, then director of St. Vincent’s Hospital, met the President and would serve as his private nurse.

In the several years afterward that he occupied the White House, President Roosevelt seems to have recognized Sister Regina’s fellow Daughters of Charity at Providence Hospital. During his second term, from 1905-1908, the Daughters and the President exchanged Christmas cards every year, with the President sending a nice thank you for their prayers and their work. Although they are not handwritten, they are all unique, which indicates that they were not a form letter but dictated by the President to a secretary. He did then personally sign the letters on official White House stationery.

His primary point-of-contact seems to have been Sister Regis Biller, another veteran of Montauk Point.

Some of the letters do have the unfortunate mar of some out-of-date archival practice, when a stamp by the holding institution was used to show ownership of an item and prove authenticity. While none of the stamps obscure the text, they tend to take the reader out of the moment with an intrusion of later 20^th century practices.