Tag Archives: Emmitsburg

September 20, 2024 · 11:21 am

Father Dubois’s Last Visit

Father John Dubois was among the most influential people in the early days of Mother Seton’s community.  Although he was not the first priest-Superior, he worked the most closely with Mother Seton in establishing the rules and norms of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s.

Portrait of Dubois

Father Dubois was the Superior from 1811 to 1826, in addition to his role as the founder, in 1809, of Mount St. Mary’s University.  In 1826, he was appointed as Bishop of New York and left his role in Emmitsburg.  On May 16, 1842, Father Dubois made one final trip to Emmitsburg.  He stayed for a few weeks, departing in June.

The accounts of his visit show him quite frail, aged 78.  Sister Ann Aloysia Reed was tasked with assisting him during his visit, and he often needed guidance to navigate the terrain.  When he was invited to give Mass to the Sisters, Mother Mary Xavier Clark worried about his health, and asked Sisters to forgo Communion and attend a second Mass later for fear of overtaxing him.  Nonetheless, he would wake early every day at the first bell after sleeping in a bed set up in Mother Seton’s old room.   

Nonetheless, for the Sisters who had been around during his tenure, it was a joyous occasion, and for the younger Sisters to meet someone about whom they had heard so many stories.  Father Dubois had provided the Sisters their first home in Emmitsburg, in a cabin on the property of Mount St. Mary’s.  He had been the most influential figure in crafting the Rule of St. Vincent for the particular situation of an American Sisters’ community, and he had helped establish a long-lasting administration of St. Joseph’s Academy.  He had provided Mother Seton with her last rites.

Father Dubois did not live long after his visit, departing this world in December of 1842, a few meager months after his visit.  Shortly after his visit, he wrote one final letter to the Community, thanking them for their hospitality and congratulating Mother Mary Xavier on her re-election as Superioress. 

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April 22, 2024 · 9:49 am

The Emmitsburg Plant Books

In the age of Laudato Si, we are reminded of the value of knowing what our common home looks like, and part of this is knowing the level of biodiversity in our environment.  The Sisters and Daughters of Charity who ministered at St. Joseph’s Academy and at their Provincial house throughout the 19th century did not go into extensive detail on trees, plants, and ecology around them.  Thankfully, some of their students did.

The Archives has five books, each containing a collection of pressed leaves and flowers of various plant species found in the area, along with the scientific name of each plant.  The books range in date from 1806 to 1874.

The typical page from one of these books consists of one or several samples cut and pasted into the books and its scientific name.

This page consists of Salvia Splendens and Salvia patens, or red and blue sage.

The scrapbooks provide evidence of the education Academy students were receiving, both in Latin and in plants and botany.  While many of the plants are native, several of them are not, indicating some type of cultivation.  One of the books even contains a chart of the plants, including its count, scientific, and common name, as well as more information on its taxonomical classification.

From 1807

Seeing as some of the books predate Mother Seton’s founding of her school in Emmitsburg in 1809, it is unclear exactly how some of the earliest books came to the collections.  Others, however, have clear provenance and direct connection to Emmitsburg, as the one created by Mary O’Rourke, class of 1874, sent by her husband and daughter after her passing.

We are in the process of scanning these books, first and foremost as a conservation measure.  Decaying plant matter does not typically do well for conservation and holding up well, as anyone familiar with trees, soil, gardening, or nutrients will tell you.  The plant samples are also incredibly fragile, made dry and brittle by over a century (sometimes two) of survival.  Scanning will preserve the books in the state they are in now, at least in image form, in case more and more pieces get whittled away.  Currently, three of the five books have been scanned, and we are planning to make them available publicly through our colleagues at Digital Maryland.  Eventually, we will make the others available as well, but due to their size, we will need to work with third-party vendors with capabilities that we do not have on-site.

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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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