Tag Archives: Daughters of Charity

April 9, 2025 · 9:37 am

Dinosaurs in Emmitsburg

Dinosaurs began to be recognized by paleontologists as the creatures that they were in the early 1800s.  In 1895, the Provincial Annals included a note about the local community and the scientific field of paleontology: 

“These few days past the men have been removing two large slabs from Avenue side walk.  One is destined for the Johns Hopkins’s University, the other for our own cabinet.  Prof. Mitchell of the Mountain [Mount St. Mary’s University] is the one who is securing these singular geological specimens.  They have long been objects of the Sisters’ curiosity & comment as they promenade up and down the Avenue in summer evening recreation.  They bear the impression of many feet of different kinds & sizes, pre-historic creatures that lived O many & many age ago!  The Professor’s interest in our quarry from where these slabs were taken led him.  His opinion is that all this land round about ages & ages ago formed an estuary, the mountains were its shores.”

The slabs documented by Dr. James A. Mitchell were the first dinosaur prints from Maryland to be announced in a scientific publication.

In the spirit of this time period, the cabinet referred to was a “cabinet of curiosities,” sort of a predecessor to a modern-day museum exhibit.  It was housed in the Burlando Building of St. Joseph’s Academy, the school thatthe Daughters operated.  Later, it was on display, in a deep historical anachronism, in the Stone House on campus where the community had begun in 1809. 

Dr. Mitchell made sketches of the slabs.  Then the slabs went missing.

In 1990, a group of maintenance workers discovered a slab in a crate with fossilized footprints in an old barn on campus.  The search was sparked by Dr. Peter Kranz, who was tracking Mitchell’s work from 100 years before.  In 1998, the slab was put on permanent display in the Maryland Science Center.  Before it was moved from Emmitsburg to Baltimore, the Sisters and employees in Emmitsburg could see it for themselves, privately and up close. 

The Maryland Science Center performed their own analysis on the footprints, identifying them as coming from:

“several dinosaurs who walked across it during the Triassic period, 210 million years ago.  Scientists are not certain exactly which type of dinosaur made the tracks….They were small, plant-eating dinosaurs, about the size of a turkey.  They were ornithischian dinosaurs, and had hip skeletons somewhat like that of birds [This time period in the 1990s is when the theory of dinosaur to bird evolution started to receive wide acceptance].  They usually walked on two legs (‘bi-pedal’), but occasionally dropped down to walk on four legs part of the time.”

Theorized sketches of the dinosaurs created by the Maryland Science Center

With the level of excitement of such a find, it was natural to assume that the same tracks that Mitchell and the Sisters set eyes on in the 1890s had been rediscovered.  However, based on his sketches, this is not the same slab, but an entirely different set of fossilized dinosaur tracks.  It appears the slab once sent to Johns Hopkins has been lost as well.

The discovery and transfer of the fossils were widely covered in the local media, and they went on display at the Maryland Science Center in the aftermath of the first two Jurassic Park films. They remain on display now in the “Dinosaur Mysteries” exhibit.

Sister Betty Ann McNeil overseeing the shipment of the slab out of Emmitsburg
Fossilized footprints on display at Maryland Science Center (Courtesy MD Science Center)

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Filed under Emmitsburg, Exhibits, James Mitchell, Ph.D., Mount St. Mary's University

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May 13, 2024 · 10:28 am

The Art Collections at the Provincial Archives

Over the years, the Archives had acquired a number of framed materials, including paintings related to the Vincentian heritage, pieces created by Daughters of Charity, majestic portraits that hung on the walls of major ministries, or even copies of old photographs thrown into a frame.  Often, these were marked as being placed in the “art section” and then put on the to-do list. 

The problems with this system are obvious, as the art section is quite large, and eventually the time would came when something would need to be retrieved, forcing us to look far and wide, handle a larger number of artifacts, and create the potential for more damage, all while taking up more space and spreading our search over ever more items.

Eventually, we became frustrated with this, and instituted a formal project to inventory the artwork for the first time.  Every single piece was touched and examined, looking at its relevance, information that we had about how it came to the Archives, its medium, and its condition.  Some pieces were discarded as cheap copies of photographs that were placed in cheap frames and, more often, copies of photographs whose originals were in the collections already.  Other pieces required more research, as they did not obviously relate to our collection policy until we learned about the individual artist or the donor.



Thus, we present some examples of the major categories of framed artwork and some of our favorites.

Mother Seton and the Canonization Cause

The Seton family portraits (including her compatriots the Filicchi brothers), painted by Father Salvator Burgio, Vice-Postulator of her canonization cause, were created in the early 1950s to promote Mothe Seton’s canonization cause.  They include young, pre-community Mother Seton; her husband; the Filicchi brothers; her father; and her five children.

Vincentian Heritage

This pair of portraits, depicting both sides of the Miraculous Medal revealed to Saint Catherine Labouré, a Daughter of Charity in the Paris Seminary in 1830, came from the chapel at the original St. Vicnent’s Hospital – late DePaul Hospital – in Norfolk, Virginia.

Honorable Mention

Although the label by the artist is incorrect, it is still a very nice work.  This painting by Mary Eichelmann depicts the Motherhouse of the entire global community of the Daughters of Charity.  Located on the Rue du bac in Paris, it only became the Motherhouse after the deaths of Vincent and Louise and after the end of the chaos of the French Revolutionary Era.

Depictions of the Daughters

Despite not necessarily being related to the American Daughters, this print of a depiction of the Daughters nursing during the Crimean War shows the universal call to service the Daughters have had since their formation and has served as an inspiration for depictions of the Daughters in later conflicts, particularly during the era when they wore the cornette habit.

Daughters’ Artwork

Sister Maureen Beitman created this work to show the great women of the American Vincentian tradition and their unity in the heart of Jesus, St. Louise de Marillac and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.  Sister Maureen titled this work Spirit into Infinity.

Honorable Mention

Sister Lucie Thai created this piece before she left Vietnam for the United States.  Taking only a few possessions with her to remind her of her homeland, she determined this to be the best example of her work and thus the one worth taking.  It was used as a model when taught girls and women in Vietnam how to craft and create, both as an artistic outlet and as a way to teach them a marketable skill.  It depicts Our Lady of La Vang.

Works from Ministries

President Eisenhower was a neighbor to the Daughters of sorts, with his Gettysburg farm being right up the road from the Daughters’ St. Joseph College.  After retiring, he took up painting, and gifted the College a self-portrait to return the favor for years of friendship and cooperation on social services in the District of Columbia. 

Honorable Mention

The Daughters’ ministry at Carville, Louisiana for those suffering from Hansen’s Disease – more commonly known as leprosy – is one of the most unique ministries the Daughters have undertaken in the history of this country.  It was a gift to Sister Dorothy Bachelot for her support of the Gillis W. Long National Hansen’s Disease Center and depicts the famous Southern Gothic architecture of the rural Louisiana hospital. 

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January 30, 2024 · 9:51 am

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 19th 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 19th century feminine life that prepared the girls to be proper 19th 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

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