USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume II > Part 14
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Despite the age of the buildings, the system of training and care is modern and according to accepted standards of welfare authorities. There is a staff of 50 in charge.
The first orphanage, known as St. Mary's, was transferred to a site on E. 20th St., and continued as a shelter for the older girls until 1894, when they were transferred to St. Joseph's orphanage and St. Mary's site was used for a working girls home. Change in neighborhood necessitated the abandonment of the girls home project and the site was sold. Later a site in a residential district was selected and Madonna Hall, a residence home for business and professional women, was established at 1906 E. 82nd St.
The Ladies of the Sacred Heart in both the orphanage and Madonna Hall live a community life and follow a religious rule. Its members however wear no religious habit but dress in quiet secular garb.
MISSIONARY SISTERS OF THE HOLY GHOST
A native of Petrograd, Russia, founded the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Ghost in Palambaro, Italy in 1890. She was Mother M. Josephine Finatowicz, a member of the Russian Schismatic church. She became a convert to the Catholic Church when 13 years of age.
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Pope Leo XIII directed her to come to America to found a religious com- munity for the purpose of praying for the Unity of the Catholic Church. In 1913 she sent her co-foundress, Mother M. Anthony, and Sister M. Aloysius to found the American foundation in Donora, Pa.
Three came to Cleveland in 1929 upon the invitation of Archbishop- Bishop Schrembs to engage in missionary work and to establish a novitiate at 12209 Corlett Ave., Cleveland. They received their education in Notre Dame academy, Cleveland, and in Catholic Sisters College. There are only 13 mem- bers in the Ohio foundation at present. In addition to their mission work in Cleveland, the Sisters have charge of the domestic work at Cathedral Latin Boys' school in charge of the Brothers of Mary.
DAUGHTERS OF DIVINE CHARITY
Daughters of Divine Charity who teach in St. Stephen's school, Toledo, Ohio, date the founding of their religious community to the year 1868 in Vienna, Austria. Their foundress, Franciska Lechner, was born in Edling, Germany in the year 1833.
The American foundation was established in New York in 1913, when two Sisters came from Budapest, Hungary. They founded a working girls home in New York. The provincial house for all the American convents of this religious community is located at St. Joseph's Hill, Arrochar, Staten Island, N. Y. Sister M. Margaret Gergely, who was superior of St. Stephen's convent, Toledo, for eight years until 1938, is the provincial superior, having been elected to this high office at the general chapter meeting held in Wien, Germany in the summer of 1938.
Stationed at St. Stephen's convent in Toledo is Sister Mary Wittman, who saw service on the battlefields of Germany during the World War.
THE CARMELITE ORDER
The Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel is a strictly cloistered order which came into Ohio in 1923 upon invitation of Archbishop Joseph Schrembs. Members of this order are more familiarly known as Car- melites. Six Sisters came from the St. Louis Monastery, two of these were Ohio born women, Sister Anna Michael and Sister Winifred, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Boyle of Cincinnati, benefactors of the Church in Cin- cinnati in the early days. Sister Winifred had been blind since infancy. Both sisters died in 1937 within a few weeks of each other. They had spent close to fifty years in the convent.
The St. Louis monastery was the first foundation from the first American Foundation established in America in 1790 and now located in Baltimore. Only recently the first convent site at Port Tobacco, Charles County, Md., has been rediscovered and is now being renovated for preservation as a relic of historical interest.
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The Sisters follow a rule which was adopted by St. Teresa of Avila, who made her religious vows in the Carmelite order in 1536. It was a somewhat mitigated rule from that which governed the original Carmelite order and which was patterned after one adopted by St. Elias, nine centuries before the birth of Christ, but is a much stricter rule than was in effect in the Carmelite order when Teresa of Avila became a member.
Their religious life is consecrated to poverty, obedience, profound retreat and silence. Their clothing, nourishment, language and customs emphasize the sequestered spirit. Their beds are hard and poor; their sleep brief; the first watches of the night are consecrated to the chanting or recitation of prayers. The day is divided between the recitation of the Divine Office, a prescribed form of prayer; assistance at Mass, prayer and manual labor. The solitude is profound; the silence almost continual and the time accorded to innocent or pious conversation is called recreation. The Nuns in their cloister observe perpetual abstinence from meat as an act of mortification ; and for them the Lenten fast begins on Sept. 14, observed in the Catholic Church calendar as the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and continues until Easter Sunday.
A Carmelite nun explains this as, "the spirit of Carmel, which is above all, one of universal crucifixion of the senses, interior as well as exterior, joined to the spirit of recollection, solitude and separation from creatures : and it is only by this continual mortification of nature that the true Car- melite, after having purified herself from her past sins by penance and from her evil inclinations by abnegation, becomes capable of interceding for those who intrust to her the interests and intentions for which they desire prayers."
St. Therese of Lisieux, canonized a saint by Pope Pius XI in 1925, and known the world over as "The Little Flower of Jesus" was a Carmelite Nun, and her intercession is constantly sought by her Carmel Sisters in Ohio, for the intentions of the many friends of Carmel.
SOCIAL MISSION SISTERS OF THE HOLY GHOST
Sister Hildegarde, who won a decoration from the Austrian government in 1918 for humanitarian service in the World War, founded a religious community in Cleveland, Ohio in 1923. It was at the invitation of Archbishop Joseph Schrembs that she came to Cleveland from her native Austria, to do home mission work in the largely populated districts of Cleveland.
Sister Hildegarde is the daughter of Count Albert Alberti-Enno and Baroness Angelique Wittenbach of Gratz, Austria. As a volunteer worker in Austria, she succeeded in reclaiming to the Church, many who had fallen away and it was her success in this that suggested the forming of a religious community. The members of this community wear secular garb. Their work is educational and social service. Their members have received their social training in the National Catholic School of Social Service, Washington, D. C.
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They are assisted in their work by a Social Mission Sisters Guild com- posed of 600 men and women; a lay Apostolate group composed of 100 high school and college girls, who are instructed in methods of mission work and conduct also a Junior Catholic Action School, for 70 high school girls.
HOLY CROSS ORDER
The Sisters of the Holy Cross, founded in LeMans, France in 1841, have been known to Ohio since 1881 when they came to take charge of St. Vin- cent's school, Akron, to continue there until 1885. A year later, in 1886, they came to Columbus, Ohio to take charge of Mount Carmel Hospital, and their next Ohio charge was in 1931, when St. Catherine's School at Bexley, Ohio, was placed in their charge.
Eliza Maria Gillespie was 29 years of age when, on March 19, 1853, she was clothed in the religious habit of a Sister of the Holy Cross. Eliza had lived in Lancaster, Ohio since 1838, with the Thomas Ewing family, follow- ing the death of her father. During these years the famine in Ireland, the cholera in Ohio enlisted her attention, and with the aid of a magazine story which she had published, and the proceeds from her tapestry, she was able to secure large sums of money to send to Ireland. During the cholera epidemic in Ohio she nursed the sick and helped in the care of destitute orphaned children.
It was Eliza Maria Gillespie, known in religion as Mother Angela, then superior of the Holy Cross order, who introduced this order into Ohio. She sent the Sisters to St. Vincent's school in Akron and later accompanied seven Sisters to open Mount Carmel hospital in Columbus, in 1886. The hospital had been founded a year before by Dr. W. B. Hawkes of the Board of Trustees of the Columbus Medical College. Sister Lydia Crawford, who had seen service in the Spanish-American War and in the Civil War, was placed in charge. Fourteen Holy Cross Sisters served in the Spanish-American War and 66 of them served in the Civil War. Two of them, Sister Fidelis and Sister Elise, died in the service. Mother Angela was among this number of 66. The archives at St. Mary's Ind., where the motherhouse of the Holy Cross Order of Nuns is located, is filled with many letters, which tell vividly and graphically, stories of the great courage and heroism of these nuns, during this distressing period of American history.
It was a well qualified staff of nursing sisters who came to Mount Carmel Hospital. A school of Nursing was established in connection with the hospital in 1903.
Their beginning in Columbus was extremely humble. Trunks served as chairs in the Sisters' quarters; the bare floor served as beds, and the Nuns' shawls were their bed covering. The Sisters of the Good Shepherd came to their aid, and supplied bedding and food.
Two additions have been added to the original hospital, one in 1887 and another in 1904 ; the chapel was built in 1908 and the Nurses' home in 1919.
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Mother Angela was one of the first of her religious community to write for publication. Many others have followed in her footsteps. Even in her day, she traveled frequently to Europe, gathering works of art, tapestries, sculpture, and these occupy prominent places in the convent and in the college of St. Mary's.
The writings of two members are well known in Ohio and are to be found on the shelves of many of the public libraries of Ohio. They are the writings of Mother Madeleva, president of St. Mary's College, and Sister Eleanore. Five of their Sisters have published musical selections; twelve of their number have had their paintings accepted for exhibition. Their com- munity today is composed of 1,192 professed Sisters; 61 novices; 16 postulants and 18 juniorates.
SISTERS OF THE HOLY FAMILY OF NAZARETH
Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, who teach in three parish schools in Ohio, were among the first to come to America to undertake work among the Polish immigrants. It was Pope Pius IX who encouraged many other religious communities to come to America and some of these to work in Ohio, who sanctioned the foundation of this particular community in 1873. The motherhouse still remains in Rome, but its convents are in the capital cities of Italy, France, England, the United States and in Poland.
Chicago was the first city in America to welcome this religious com- munity and in 1885 the foundress Mother Frances Siedliska and 11 com- panions established in that city, her first American convent. Of its present membership of 2,250 nuns, more than 1,600 are in America.
St. Stanislaus school in Cleveland, once the largest Polish school in the United States, has been in their charge since 1907. They came to Ohio first in 1906 to staff St. Adalbert's school at Dillonvale, Ohio and in 1919, they were placed in charge of Our Lady of Czestochwa School, Cleveland, Ohio.
The higher education of the Sisters is pursued in many of the Catholic colleges and universities of America and in the Sorbonne, in Paris; Oxford, in England; the University of Warsaw, and the Jagiellonian University of Poland.
Annually, about seven of the Sisters, including some of those teaching in Ohio, are sent as scholarship students to Poland for one scholastic course.
GREY NUNS OF CHARITY OF MONTREAL
"Sisters of Charity" is the more familiar name for the Grey Nuns of Charity of Montreal, whose history dates back to the year 1738 and whose record of service in Ohio dates back to the year 1855, when a small number came to Toledo to establish St. Vincent's Orphanage. In 1876, another group from Montreal came to take charge of St. Vincent's Hospital, Toledo.
Marie Marguerite De Frost de la Jemmerais, born in 1701. married to Francois Madeleine d'Youville in 1722, was widowed in 1730. She conducted
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a small store to raise funds with which to support her two sons and out of her poverty found enough to extend hospitality to the aged poor of her neighborhood. In 1738, three companions, attracted by her great charity and her great love for the poor, joined with her and on Oct. 30, 1739 together they made their act of consecration as servants of suffering humanity.
The "Annales" of the community record this scene, "Madame d'Youville did not falter while reciting the act of consecration, but her companions could not control their emotion. Mlle. Demers succeeded in stifling her sobs, but Mlles. Cusson and Thaumur de la Source shed torrents of tears. Thus the Institute was baptized in the tears of these valiant women!"
Madame d'Youville as a child studied with the Ursulines at Montreal, the first religious community of women to penetrate into the wilds of the North American continent, having arrived in Quebec in 1639.
One of her religious advisors while a student of the Ursulines was Mere Marie des Anges, who was among the first company of Ursulines to come from the Old France to the New France. Mother St. Pierre, also an Ursuline was an aunt of Madame d'Youville and Pierre de Varennes de la Verendryc, discoverer of the Rocky Mountains was her uncle.
The work of Madame d'Youville has grown through the 200 years of its existence. From a community of four women it now numbers 5,300 engaged in 67 different missions, most of which are located in northern and western Canada. The most distant of their missions is Aklavik, founded in 1925 and situated on the delta of the Mackenzie River. It is fifty miles from the Arctic Ocean and 4000 miles northwest of Montreal.
To one of their former general superiors, Mother Piche, was given the decoration, "Commander of the Order of the British Empire," conferred upon her by King George V in 1934 in recognition of "fifty-three years of intelligent, tireless service for the poor, the sick, the aged and the distant missions of Western Canada."
She was the first General Superior ever to visit the extreme northern missions and although 71 years of age in 1917, she traveled 3,377 miles by hydroplane and steamboat. The present General Superior, Mother M. E. Gallant, in 1937, made a journey of 10,647 miles in visiting the northern missions. Some 3,000 miles of the journey was covered by plane.
VINCENTIAN SISTERS OF CHARITY
Another religious community in Ohio, established primarily to meet the educational needs of the children of Slovak race, is the Vincentian Sisters of Charity. The motherhouse is located at Bedford, Ohio, in the former home of Mrs. Sabina Schatziner, now a resident of Lakewood, Ohio.
It was at the request of Archbishop Joseph Schrembs, archbishop-bishop of Cleveland that three Sisters came from their first American motherhouse at Perrysville, Pa., to establish a Foundation. The community now numbers
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90 and is a separate foundation from the Perrysville convent.
This community dates its origin to 1835 in Vienna, Austria, with Carolina Augusta, daughter of Franz I, Emperor of Austria as the foundress. It established its first American branch in 1902 with headquarters in Braddock, Pa., and its work was confined to education in the schools of the Pittsburgh area. The motherhouse later was transferred to Perrysville, Pa.
Their present convent site of 17 acres was originally given to Archbishop Schrembs by Mrs. Schatziner to be used for religious or educational pur- poses. Shortly afterwards, the Sisters were invited to come to the diocese and the deed of the property was transferred to the Vincentian Sisters. It is known as Villa San Bernardo, in memory of Mr. Bernard Schatzinger, husband of the donor. In recognition of her gift, Mrs. Schatzinger was decorated by Pope Pius XI with the Gold Cross "Pro Ecclesiae et Pontifice."
SISTERS OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT
A very special interest in the Indian and colored races, prompted Kath- erine Drexel, of the famed Drexel family of Philadelphia, to found a religious community of women whose chief work would be to work among these people. This was in 1891. The old Drexel homestead at Torresdale, Pa., became the first convent and novitiate, with Katherine Drexel known as Mother Katherine Drexel and the religious community which she founded known as Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.
Katherine and her two sisters, Mrs. Walter George Smith and Mrs. Edward Morrell, inherited a large estate from their father, Francis Anthony Drexel. He had bequeathed $1,500,000 to charity. His daughters, in memory of their father, founded the Francis A. Drexel chair of moral theology in the Catholic University, Washington, D. C.
The humility of Katherine Drexel has never revealed the financial con- tribution which she has made to extend educational work among the Indians and colored races. All that is known is that she renounced all of her world's goods for this cause.
Before her father's death she had used some of her fortune for the establishment of five Indian schools, two in the Dakotas and one each in Minnesota, Wyoming and New Mexico.
In 1887, two years after her father's death, she had visited Rome and had an audience with Pope Leo XIII. She begged him to send missionaries to America to work among the Indians in the south, southwest and the west. He listened to her story and then said, "Why not be a missionary yourself."
After due consideration she entered the convent of the Sisters of Mercy at Pittsburgh to prepare for a religious life and with other young women of similar interests, she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in 1891.
Her Sisters came to Ohio first in 1912 to teach in St. Cyprian's School in Columbus and in 1914 to teach in St. Ann's School in Cincinnati. In 1925
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they were assigned to Holy Trinity School, Cincinnati and in 1926, when purchase of the old Notre Dame Academy at Court and Mound Sts., was completed by the archdiocese of Cincinnati, The Madonna High School for colored boys and girls became a reality with Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in charge. Madonna High School is on the list of accredited high schools of the State of Ohio.
Cleveland, Ohio came to know of these Sisters in 1922, when they arrived to take charge of the Blessed Sacrament Parish School for colored children.
The motherhouse of this community is at Cornwell Heights, Pa., where a Normal school for the Sisters is also conducted. Advanced studies for school and social work are pursued in Catholic University and Loyola Uni- versity.
Other states to enjoy the services of these Sisters are Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Virginia, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, where work is exclusively among the colored people and in New Mexico, Arizona, Nebraska and South Dakota, where the work is among the Indians.
The only university in America that is exclusively for colored people is Xavier University at New Orleans, the gift of Mother Katherine Drexel. The campus of this university was the scene of many religious ceremonies for the National Eucharistic Congress held in New Orleans in October, 1938.
SISTERS OF THE VISITATION OF THE HOLY MARY
Sister Mary Agnes Faulhaber became the foundress of the Ohio Founda- tion of the Sisters of the Visitation of Holy Mary, whose monastery is located at 1745 Parkside Blvd., Toledo, Ohio.
These Sisters came to Toledo in 1915 in response to the invitation of Archbishop Joseph Schrembs, then Bishop of Toledo. The foundress was a Cleveland, Ohio woman, who had become a member of the Georgetown Visitation Monastery, some years before.
The Toledo monaster, gift of a generous benefactress whose name may not be revealed, houses 37 members, who lead a strictly contemplative life. It is the third monastery of the Visitandines, the name by which this religious order is sometimes known, to adopt the primitive rule of their founder. St. Frances de Sales, who gave the rule to the Visitandines in 1610.
Stress of circumstances necessitated mitigating the primitive rule so as to permit both the contemplative and active life and in many of the Visitation convents in America the revised rule is in effect.
The Toledo Sisters, however, cling to the primitive rule and seek to extend the spiritual life beyond the cloister by means of the Archconfraternity of Guard of Honor for the Laity, which meets monthly for spiritual exercises. The confraternity numbers 5,000 persons.
Archbishop Schrembs upon the occasion of the founding of the religious community in Toledo, told the Sisters that "like Moses, you are to remain
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upon the mountain-top in prayer and sacrifice to plead for the welfare and salvation of souls, particularly for those of the diocese, the clergy, the Re- ligious and the Laity."
Many novenas and religious exercises held at the Monastery and con- ducted by the Jesuit Fathers, attract thousands to the Monastery during the course of a year.
The work of the Sisters is dedicated to the making of altar breads for many parishes in Toledo; mending vestments, sewing and art work.
SISTERS OF THE MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD
A widowed mother and a priest, her son, established a religious founda- tion in Ohio that has enriched the State in the quality and quantity of services rendered its citizenry and has spread its influence far beyond the borders of Ohio.
Maria Anna Brunner of Loewenberg in the Canton of Grisons, Switzer- land with 12 women companions formed a religious community in 1834 which had as its sole aim, prayer for increase of vocations to the priesthood and an increase in zeal for the missions of the Catholic Church. Her son, Francis de Sales Brunner, had been ordained a priest in 1819. In 1843 with seven priests and six students he came to Ohio and located at Peru, near Norwalk, Ohio.
Eager to extend the work of the church in his new locality he sent to Switzerland to the convent founded by his mother for Sisters to help in the educational field. His mother had died in 1836, two years after she had founded the religious community.
In 1844, Mother Maria Anna Albrecht, another widow, who was a pro- fessed religious, her daughter, Sister Rosa Albrecht and Martina Catherine Disch, both novices, arrived in Norwalk to take over St. Alphonse school of which Father Brunner was pastor, and to set up a novitiate for American recruits.
The log cabin convent which had been erected for their occupancy was found to be inadequate for the number of young women who sought admission into this religious community. Consequently a monastery in course of con- struction at New Reigel, Ohio, for the priests of the Precious Blood order, who had come a year earlier to Ohio, was turned over for the use of the Sisters. Within less than a year's time the community numbered 14 Sisters.
Sister Crescentia, a Benedictine nun, exiled from France during the French Revolution, had sought shelter in the home of relatives, who had also fled from France and located near Norwalk, Ohio. She was of great help to the young community. Sister Mary Adelaide Sehmerge, one of the first applicants, came from Buffalo. An experienced teacher, she, too, rendered invaluable help.
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In 1848 Father Brunner conceived the plan of establishing a training school for teachers and Dr. Muller and other priests of the Precious Blood Order, assisted by Sister Crescentia, staffed the new school. The first en- rollment consisted of 10 Sisters. As early as 1888, names of Sisters from the Precious Blood community were found on the registers of such colleges and universities as were opened to women at that time and down through the years, even until today, their Sisters are to be found attending the leading colleges and universities in the country.
Their work has extended far beyond that of praying for vocations, and of educating poor children. They conduct 40 elementary schools, most of them within the area of the archdiocese of Cincinnati and the diocese of Toledo and Cleveland. They own three of the 15 high schools in which they teach, one, "The Regina," is their latest undertaking. It is located at Norwood, a suburb of Cincinnati. The other two are located at Salem Heights, near Dayton and at San Luis Rey, Cal.
They serve parishes in Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, California and New Mexico. In California and New Mexico, they work among Mexican and Indian children and in Sedalia, Mo., they conduct a school for colored children.
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