Tag Archives: Daughters of Charity

January 23, 2023 · 11:30 am

Mexican Refugees, 1875

January 8, 1875: “Today we received the sad intelligence that our dear Sisters are to be driven from their homes in Mexico by a Godless government. Not less two hundred and fifty of them torn from the poor, the sick and the dear orphans.”
-Provincial Annals, Province of the United States

The Daughters’ Archive details a number of dramatic events in national and international history alongside those of the Community. In 1875, international and Community history collided in the Restored Mexican Republic and made refugees of the Daughters of Charity themselves. Their American sisters took them in and provided them with the chance to maintain their lives and vocations.

Since 1857, Mexico had been a Republic with no official religion. After a brief intervention by the French Empire and the defeat of Emperor Maximilian in 1867, the republican nature of the country was restored. Attempts to seize land of those who had collaborated with Maximilian, however, led to protests and uprisings in the years afterward. Among those considered allied with Maximilian was the Catholic Church.

In 1875, President Lerdo seized the property of the Daughters of Charity in Mexico under the Law for the Nationalization of Ecclesiastical Properties. Over 400 Daughters were deported, most of them citizens of Mexico. Most notably among the institutions the Daughters were forced to abandon were the hospitals of the capital city, and their departure saw crowds turn up and weep on the fateful day they left. About 80 Daughters came to the United States, with others going to Spain and France.

Much of the correspondence between the American Visitatrix – Sister Euphemia Blenkinsop – and her counterpart in Mexico has been lost. The Provincial Annals provide the most detailed dates of the arrival of the Sisters to the U.S., with the first group of 21 sisters having arrived in New Orleans on February 2 and the second group of 45 arriving in San Francisco on February 19. Based on the surviving letter of February 5, this was not exactly in the plan, as Mother Blenkinsop asked that “the greater number…be sent by New Orleans.”

Sister Ignatia Bruce described the arrival in San Francisco, where the Daughters on mission there, along with about one hundred students of their schools, went to see and show how to welcome refugees:

In compliance with the Archbishop’s wish, we, with about one hundred of the larger day scholars went to meet them. We were on the wharf nearly an hour before the steamer made its appearance. By special request several officers were on the spot to see that everything was attended to. They were indeed very kind and had everything taken out of the way, so the children might stand just where the steamer would land.

Letter from Archbishop Alemany of San Francisco

Sister Ignatia went on to describe the comedic scene that took place as everyone present ran against the language barrier, as the Daughters from Mexico did not speak English. They did, however, have carriages arranged, which took them to the School in order to give the Mexican sisters their first meal on shore and to make sure they had warm clothes for the San Francisco cold. With only two of the American sisters present speaking Spanish, they found that they easiest way to communicate was sign language:

Meantime the Sisters were getting acquainted with each other. None of the Mexicans understood one word of English and of the Californians but two spoke Spanish. But some of them had a smattering of the language and though they might count the words they knew, even so much was not to be lost. And then, some three or four had acquired a slight knowledge of the language of Deaf-mutes. This was brought into service too, and as the signs were of the simplest nature they were intelligible to all. Laughable mistakes were sometimes made. One of the California Sisters for instance sympathetically inquired “if they were married?” instead of “if they were tired,” the words of the Spanish being similar. But, their gentle courtesy understood the proper question and graciously answered “No.”

Sister Candida Brennan at St. Simeon’s School in New Orleans offered her own account of the arrival of the refugee Daughters there:

Ere this arrives you will have heard that our dear Mexican Sisters, twenty two in number, are with us. Mother, Sisters Agnes Slavin, Andrea Gibbs and myself went as far as Algiers to meet them yesterday evening. The train arrived at four o’clock p.m. The last car contained the long expected guests. When they caught sight of our cornettes they nearly jumped out of the cars. Then, such a silent conversation! The eyes spoke what the tongue refused to utter. Sister was able to speak some Spanish and I said all the Spanish words I knew regardless of sense or connection, so between us, we made them feel quite welcome. Of all the sights you ever saw, none surpassed them! They had worn their cornettes for three weeks, through all kinds of weather and in all places. Their blue aprons were patched, pieced and padded with all the shades of blue that ever born the name. Their shawls were not only unlike, but of all colors white, black, grey and I think one was yellow. As to the bundles, bags, band boxes, tin cans, baskets, you can forme no idea, some of which were so heavy that it required two Sisters to carry one of them.

Many of the foreign Daughters were missioned to Paris or to Panama by mid-summer of 1875. A few stayed around for a few more years serving in some of the missions in California. In 1880, Sister Carlota Gazea wrote back to the United States from Panama:

I have kept silence a long time, but it was only the month that ceased to speak for want of time, but my heart is always full of gratitude towards you and I have you all present in my poor prayers. You know my dear Sister, the confidence I always have had in you, and that I have chosen you to be my interpreter with our esteemed Mother Euphemia, and as the principal object of my letter is to wish her a happy feast. I beg you to do it for me choosing the most affectionate and energetic words of the English language and all that your loving and grateful heart may dictate to you.

Four sisters served in California until 1880 when they were missioned to Ecuador. In 1882, the last sisters who had been exiled were missioned to El Salvador. They, too, wrote in their gratitude for their American sisters’ fulfillment of the demand to help those in need and in exile.

Our colleagues at the Archives of the Province of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Los Altos, CA have their own accounts of this event in their collections. They recently posted some of them here.

Our Four campuses: St. Louis, Missouri

This is the final part of our four-part series on the history of the four primary campuses in the Province, which correspond to the locations where the four provinces that formed the Province of St. Louise had their provincial houses: Emmitsburg, MD; Albany, NY; Evansville, IN; and St. Louis, MO. Part one on the Emmitsburg campus can be found here. Part two on the Albany campus can be found here. Part three on the Evansville campus can be found here.

The second-oldest campus of the current Province of St. Louise dates to the first time there was a re-alignment of provinces in the United States. In 1910, a portion of the American Daughters would form a new province in Normandy, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis.

The new province had already begun planning before it became official when Sisters Eugenia Fealy, Augustine Park, and three Seminary sisters opened the new St. Louis Seminary at St. Vincent’s Hospital, one of the Daughters’ main hospitals in St. Louis at the time. For the first six years of the Province’s existence, affairs were run from the Hospital until the new Marillac Provincial House was completed. The official opening date of the Provincial House coincided with the consecration of the Chapel on September 27, 1916.

In 1930, the first burials at the Marillac Cemetery took place. The cemetery is still in use today and serves as the primary place of burial for Daughters of Charity who pass away in the St. Louis area. The first two individuals buried were Sister Isabel Thomas and Father John Sullivan, the first Provincial Director.

In 1939, as in other provinces, Villa St. Louise opened as a retirement facility for Sisters serving in the Ministry of Prayer so that they could begin – and end – their ministries on the same campus.

In 1957, the grounds of the Provincial House expanded into something larger and more experimental – Marillac College. This fully accredited institution was part of the trend of “Sisters’ colleges” where all students had to be professed or novice members of a community of women religious. You can learn more about Marillac College through this blog post.

Although it provided a robust learning environment for 17 years, the College was not financially viable and closed in 1974. By 1976, the remainder of the former College’s buildings had been sold to form the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL).

In 1995, with the land and building of the campus having grown too large for the size of the province at the time, the decision was made to downsize to a smaller set of offices and provincial house. Shortly after the final move occurred, the original Marillac Provincial House building was also sold to UMSL, where it would house the Honor’s College beginning in 2002. Sisters in the Ministry of Prayer relocated to Bridgeton, Missouri to live in a new facility next door to DePaul Health Center, then sponsored by the Daughters’ Health System. The provincial office moved to Olive Street in St. Louis City, with the new provincial house relocating to the so-called “yellow house,” a former cloister of a group of Augustinian nuns and a short walk away. When the opportunity arose in 2010, the Daughters purchased the historic “red house” next door to create the combined Provincial House of the Province of St. Louise. Although not a unified campus setting in the way that it once was, it suits the needs of the Province of St. Louise today after the provincial merger of 2011.

Marillac Provincial House was known for its large chapel with an alter made of 10,000 pieces of marble and large stained glass windows depicting, among others, St. Vincent de Paul in the galleys and the Martyred Daughters of Arras, to name just two.

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November 21, 2022 · 9:36 am

Our Four campuses: Evansville, Indiana

This is part three of a four-part series on the history of the four primary campuses in the Province, which correspond to the locations where the four provinces that formed the Province of St. Louise had their provincial houses: Emmitsburg, MD; Albany, NY; Evansville, IN; and St. Louis, MO. Part one on the Emmitsburg campus can be found here. Part two on the Albany campus can be found here.

Our Evansville campus was the second established location following the provincial divisions of 1969. Alongside the Albany province, the new Evansville province had to begin organizing its affairs.

Initially, the East Central province utilized the Kellogg House on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago for its campus location. Due to the issues of space, transportation, cost of land and living, and the hassles of downtown big-city life, Visitatrix Elise Boudreaux began scouting locations for a more permanent campus.

Kellogg House, Chicago on Lake Shore Drive, 1969

In April 1971, the province purchased 195 acres of land at 9400 New Harmony Road in Evansville and began construction on a new provincial house. This land was selected because in order to ensure that the provincial house was near to the Seton Manor, which had already been established as the residence for Sisters in retirement. It also served as a mid-point to some of the largest and most longstanding ministries of the Daughters in Chicago, Nashville, St. Louis, and Indianapolis. Starting in September of that year, the offices were shifted from Chicago to Evansville at the nearby St. Mary’s Hospital, which the Daughters had operated since the late 19^th century. Finally, in March of 1974, the last group of Sisters moved to the new seat of the province.

Scouting the new campus site; taken from the provincial newsletters

In 1991, the Sisters of Seton Manor moved even closer to the provincial house when they relocated to the newly constructed Seton Residence. Sisters could now begin their vocation in the Seminary and end it in the Ministry of Prayer on the same campus.

Aerial of Seton Residence, formerly known as Seton Manor, 1993, with the rest of the Evansville campus visible in the background centered around the lake

The campus is often described – particularly by the sisters who came from the former East Central Province – as the most beautiful of the campuses, featuring a manmade lake from the 1940s, a log cabin that was once slated for destruction but has since become a small chapel, and pathways through the woods for Sisters, visitors, and people looking for some peace and quiet.