USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume II > Part 18
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41
The Sisters teach in 11 parish schools in Youngstown and vicinity and give religious instruction in seven parishes where there are no parish schools.
In the early days as additional demands were made upon them for parish school work, Toledo nuns came to supplement the staff. Mother M. Lawrence McCaffrey of Toledo came in 1878 and served as Mother superior for more than a quarter of a century.
When the influenza epidemic struck Youngstown in 1918, the nuns for the first time left their convent cloister in response to the city's appeal for help in care of the sick. They went into homes where entire families lay ill, and not only nursed them, but rendered necessary services in the home. They served in the emergency hospitals, hastily erected in vantage points of the city. Cleveland Ursulines did likewise, serving night and day in homes and in hospitals.
Cleveland Ursulines again parted with some of their members when in October, 1884, just ten months after Mother Amadeus had left the Toledo convent for Montana, Mother St. Joseph, who had established the Tiffin con- vent in 1863, with a Miss Henry, a postulant, left for Miles City, Montana to aid Mother Amadeus. Miss Henry became the first Ohio postulant for the Montana mission fields, and she was given the name of Sister St. Clara. These two immediately upon their arrival opened a boarding and parochial school in Miles City. Mother Joseph returned after 12 years of service, much against the wishes of city and government officials, one of whom said "I would rather see two thirds of the city depart, than to have Mother St. Joseph leave her work among the Indians." Sister St. Clara continued until her death in 1915.
In 1886 Mother St. Bernard and Mother St. Thomas from the Cleveland convent joined with Ursulines from Toledo and Tiffin to help in the fast
58.9
WOMEN OF OHIO
growing Montana mission work. Mother St. Thomas spent 50 years in the Indian missions, working among the Cheyennes, the Crows, the Blackfeet, the Gros Ventre and the Assinaboine Indians. She died in 1936. Although she shirked no responsibility, be the task menial or otherwise, the work for which she was most distinguished was her instruction in music. She had the rare privilege of teaching three generations of Indian children.
One has but to read the history of the Ursulines in Ohio to appreciate the truth in the tribute paid to the Cleveland Ursulines in 1925 upon the occasion of their 75th anniversary of founding in Cleveland. On that occasion, The Rt. Rev. Msgr. Francis T. Moran, D. D., then pastor of St. Patrick's parish, in which parish the Ursulines have taught 89 years paid this tribute :
"Oh, what noble sacrifices there were in those gentle women : Oh, woman, gentle in nature, braver than your counterpart, man, how often have you put him to shame in the completeness of your sacrifice."
On that occasion in 1925 for the Jubilee mass were used the same mass equipment and the same priests' garments which were used for the offering of the first mass in the convent chapel on Euclid Ave., in 1850. Only the original altar formed from the trunks and suitcases of the nuns was missing. In its place for the diamond jubilee was a beautifully hand carved altar of wood.
The chasuble and dalmatics worn by the priests were made by an Ursuline nun. An Ursuline artist nun painted upon the cross center of the Chasuble a copy of Corregio's Madonna of the Staircase and around this was painted a garland of rose buds. The same designs were worked into the dalmatics. It was later revealed that the rose buds represented one for each member of the community. The roses on the Mass vestments represented the professed nuns and those on the Benediction veil represented the novices and postulants.
This celebration took place during the absence in Rome of Bishop Joseph Schrembs, fifth bishop of the Cleveland diocese. Upon his return he wrote to the Ursulines, excerpts of which follow :
"Your sisters were the pioneers in the educational field of the diocese of Cleveland. Your lives and your work have been most intimately interwoven with the life and spiritual work of the diocese. I cannot help but feel that the diocese itself owes you a public recognition of your services and what is more, owes a public thanksgiving to God, the Giver of all good gifts, for the blessing of your coming.
"Such a celebration cannot fail to focus the attention of all the faithful of the diocese upon the glory and the power and the wonderful fruitfulness of the religious life and this is indeed the lesson which our generation needs to learn.
"As the fifth Bishop of Cleveland and the heir to the rich inheritance of the past, I feel it my sacred duty to recognize in a most public and solemn thanksgiving to God and gratitude to your community, the glory of these
590
WOMEN OF OHIO
past seventy-five years. It is my wish therefore, that on December twenty- eighth at nine-thirty in the morning the Diamond Jubilee of the coming of the Ursulines to the diocese of Cleveland be commemorated through pontifical High Mass of thanksgiving at which all the Ursuline Sisters will attend, and to which they will invite the Sister communities of the Diocese in a spirit of Fraternal love."
Clergy and members from the different religious communities of women from the diocese and adjoining dioceses, joined with the Ursulines on that day in this distinctive tribute extended them by Bishop Schrembs. The Ursulines of Ohio eagerly look forward to the year 1945-when 100 years of Angela Merici's teaching system in Ohio will be fittingly observed at Brown County. The year 1939 saw the Ursulines the world over sharing in the joy and the glory of the tri-centennial of the Ursulines on the North American continent.
There is another Ursuline foundation in Ohio, this located at Caldwell, Ohio, and dates its origin to the Ursuline convent in Germany. It has been in Ohio since 1913 and its most recent recruits, three of them, have come from Germany, forced to flee because of the Nazi persecution of religious.
These Sisters teach in several parish schools located in Columbus, Fulda and Burkhart in Ohio. Its motherhouse in America was in Omaha. Neb.
CATHOLIC MEDICAL MISSIONARIES
A former Presbyterian missionary in India, Dr. Agnes McLaren, is re- sponsible for the most recent of Catholic religious orders, which has already attracted one Ohio woman, Dr. Helen Lalinsky, a full fledged doctor of medicine.
-
Dr. Lalinsky was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1908, and later moved to Canton, Ohio, where she was educated in the parish schools there. She studied as a laboratory technician in Mercy Hospital, Canton, conducted by the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine, a Cleveland religious foundation.
The Catholic Medical Missionaries had been organized only two years in 1927, when Dr. Lalinsky, now Sister Alma, enrolled as a member. After her enrollment there she was permitted to study in Trinity College, Wash- ington, D. C., a college started in 1900 by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur of Reading, Ohio. She took her premedical course at Trinity and in September, 1931, she entered Women's Medical College, in Philadelphia. where she received her M.D. degree in 1935. She served her interneship in Misericordia Hospital in Philadelphia from 1935-1936 and in 1937 she took special work in Georgetown University Hospital, Georgetown, Washington, D. C.
In March of 1938, she left for India, where she is in charge of Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, India.
A Catholic missionary Bishop, Bishop Wagner, prefect Apostolic of Kashmir and Kafristan, India, met Dr. McLaren one day and said to her. "Ir my 16 years of work in the North of India, I have never seen the face of
591
WOMEN OF OHIO
a Mohammedan woman." Dr. McLaren, a missionary of many years exper- ience, knew the reason why. The religious laws of India and its customs ruled that only women could minister women and bring relief and Christian influence into their lives.
Dr. McLaren was then 60 years of age. She became a Catholic and at the age of 72 years she returned to India to found a hospital. It was easy enough to found a hospital, but where to get women doctors and nurses to staff it. She traveled through Scotland, England and Ireland to find one woman doctor who would volunteer. She was not successful. She had no difficulty finding Sisters who were willing to undertake this pioneer work, but the rules of religious forbade them to study medicine with the view of practicing it. Dr. MeLaren made five trips to Rome, between 1910 and 1913, to seek permission of church authorities for a dispensation from this rule, but with no success at that time. Undaunted, she decided to seek a lay- woman, not bound by religious vows and Dr. Anna Dengel from the Austrian Tyrol country responded.
The fact that India was a British colony suggested to Dr. McLaren that Dr. Dengel might better study medicine in an English speaking country and so her medical degree was obtained in Ireland after nine years of preparation for it.
Dr. Dengel came to America in 1924 and met Rev. Michael Mathis, then superior of the Holy Cross Mission Seminary, Washington, D. C. He was interested in the work, and together they founded the Society of Catholic Medical Missionaries. Still the dispensation for Nuns to participate in com- plete medical course did not come. In 1936, however, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith at Rome issued instructions which had far reaching importance in the matter of maternity and child welfare care. Ex- cerpts of this proclamation follow :
"This Sacred Congregation would like to see new religious institutes for women founded who will dedicate themselves principally to health work, making due provision for the necessary safeguards. These Institutes must be founded and developed ad norman juris communis . .
"These new duties demand a proper technical and spiritual preparation. The Sisters should obtain certificates as doctors or nurses. Above all, they should be safeguarded by special spiritual protections which will be determined by the superiors. The religious must see a noble expression of Christian charity in this delicate service, a charitable work destined to ease bodily misery and to open the way for the grace of Redemption."
In the missions now, Catholic women can and do combine the religious life with that of medicine and nursing sisters are even permitted to include obstetrics in their ministrations.
Once again the persistency of woman won: The Sacred Congregation's proclamation gave this as its reason for its decision: "It has always been the practice of this Sacred Congregation to have the methods of the Apostolate
592
WOMEN OF OHIO
to conform to the varying needs of time and place. Several missionary ordin- aries have brought to the attention of the Holy See the necessity of making more appropriate provision for the health of mothers and infants." It ful- filled the dream of Dr. Agnes McLaren for Women doctors in India-women doctors bound by religious vows.
FOREIGN MISSION SISTERS OF ST. DOMINIC
The Foreign Missionary Sisters of St. Dominic, more familiarly known as The Maryknoll Sisters, is a religious institute which has had phenomenal growth in the short time of its existence. A study club inspired the or- ganization.
Granted Papal approbation to organize as a Religious Congregation in 1920 and to work in the missions of the Far East, the religious Institute today numbers more than 500 members. Its community might well be called a miniature League of Nations as among its members are native Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Australians, Canadians, Belgians and American born of many nationalities. The scope of work of this religious community is so varied that it provides an avenue of service for any Catholic woman religiously inclined and interested in foreign missions.
Among its members are graduates in medicine, pharmacy, nursing, trained teachers and journalists, women of special business experience, one for in- stance a former assistant manager of a Chamber of Commerce.
It all came about because Sister Mary Joseph Rogers, the first superior, while an instructor at Smith College, Northampton, Mass., was told that as a Catholic she should be doing something to organize the Catholic students attending Smith College. This came from one of the non-Catholic professors.
She did organize the Catholic Students. They expressed a desire to form a study club and the first subject to be studied was the mission work of their Church.
As its first leader, Miss Rogers was directed to the Society for the propagation of the Faith, to secure a study club outline and material.
There she met the Rev. James Anthony Walsh, then diocesan director of the Faith and later organizer and first president of the Catholic Foreign Missionary Society, and now Bishop Walsh. By the time the study club had finished its first year, three of the class, including Miss Rogers, decided they would like to do something for the missions. They offered their services to the new Catholic Foreign Missionary Society which had been organized only a year before. They were assigned to secretarial work in the office of the society and later others joined with them. In 1912 they were given a home on the Hudson River site of the society, now known as Maryknoll-on-the- Hudson. They called themselves Teresians, in honor of St. Teresa, and while they did follow a religious rule, as yet Papal approval of a religious foundation had not been given them. The present archbishop of Cincinnati, Archbishop
593
WOMEN OF OHIO
John T. MeNicholas, visiting Maryknoll, called on the Teresians and recom- mended that they unite with an already established religious community. He enrolled them as Dominican Tertiaries and later sent Dominican Nuns to train them in the Dominican Rule. Three Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart Convent at Scranton, Pa., had previously come to Maryknoll to remain two years and to train them in the religious novitiate.
In 1920 Papal approbation was received and in 1921 the first group started out for the mission fields of South China. They adopted the name of Foreign Mission Sisters of St. Dominic.
Since that time, the work engaged in the Far East is as all embracing as the needs of society. For instance, in Hong Kong where the wealthy Chinese girl can be, and is a powerful force for good or evil, the Sisters conduct a school that prepares the students for Oxford examinations.
In Loting, South China, where the custom of abandoning babies is widely practiced they conduct a nursery and orphanage for these waifs.
In Manila, where the poor suffer from undernourishment, overcrowding and the merciless heat of the tropics, they conduct a visiting nurses' service in homes and in hospitals, besides distributing nourishing food and medicine to those in need.
In Shanghai, Mercy Hospital for the mentally ill, erected by Lo Pa Hong, called the John D. Rockefeller of China because of his great wealth and his generous gifts to charity, gives the Sisters an opportunity of alleviating the sufferings of the mentally ill, and also shows the more fortunate people that the charity of Christ extends to those most neglected of the afflicted. Lo Pa Hong was assassinated about a year ago.
In Korea where the education of women has been singularly neglected, there is a school which divides its time between the three R's and industrial work, so that by acquiring the rudiments of learning and a self-supporting trade, the young women will gain security.
A work which they consider of great importance is the training of native sisterhoods, not an easy task in view of the fact that not only is marriage universal for women in most Oriental countries, but girls are bought and sold like any other property, sometimes as slaves and sometimes as brides.
The giving in marriage usually occurs between the ages of 12 and 14 years. This means that the fostering of religious vocations must begin with the girl before she has reached 12 years.
The Maryknoll Sisters have been in Korea 15 years and on June 27. 1938, they witnessed the first group of Maryknoll novices, one Japanese and 15 Koreans who were given the habit of the Maryknoll. This new foundation is known as the novitiate of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
It is part of the mission program of the Catholic Church to work towards the development of a native Sisterhood and priesthood in the mission lands, as it is generally recognized that one who is of the people, who is acquainted
594
WOMEN OF OHIO
with their customs and culture, can best work with the people of the mission lands. Consequently, The American Maryknoll Sisters do not attempt to westernize the people whom they have come to serve, to teach them English or American ways. On the contrary, it is the Sisters who adjust themselves to the new surroundings, not only learning the different languages and dialects, but accepting their mode of living to a great extent.
The Maryknoll Sisters have even taken a course in Girl Scout work and have Girl Scout programs in Korea, Manchuria, Hawaii, the Phillippines and the Japanese schools on the West Coast. The Sisters trained in the Girl Scout Center in New York.
Ohio has 17 women engaged in the work. The first to enter Maryknoll from Ohio in 1920, shortly after it had been established as a religious con- gregation, was Freda Beez, of Defiance, Ohio, now Sister M. Genevieve. At present she is at the Maryknoll Motherhouse, but for 10 years, from 1927 to 1937, she served in Korea, part of the time as regional superior in charge of 13 convents and 59 Sisters, carrying on work in hospitals, dispensaries, schools, orphanages, old folks' homes and in social service.
Sister Mary Paulita (Miss Mary Rose Hoffman) of Cincinnati, a member since 1933, a graduate of Our Lady of the Angels High School, Cincinnati, and a student at the Teachers College, Cincinnati Athenaeum. for a year and one-half, is now in Tung Shek, China, in the Centre House and Language School conducted by the Sisters. She is making a study of the languages in preparation for a new type of work, that of visiting Chinese women in their homes, and conducting Catechumen classes in their convent quarters for women and children.
Sister Mary Ann (Mary Fuchs), of Chillicothe, Ohio, was assistant man- ager of the Chamber of Commerce at Chillicothe before enrolling as a Mary- knoll nun and is now at the Maryknoll house preparing for Far East work.
Sister Mary Lelia Makra, graduate of Ursuline Academy, Cleveland and former teacher of commercial subjects in the same school, is now in Fushun, Manchukuo as superior of the convent there. She was graduated from Mt. St. Vincent's College, New York, and was a teacher in the Maryknoll School for Japanese in Los Angeles before leaving, in 1934, for Fushun. Following her arrival in Fushun, she studied the languages and served as an instructor in mathematics and other subjects to the native novices in Fushun.
Sister David Marie (Marie H. Scanlon), of Cincinnati, is at present superior of St. James Academy and Normal School at Mallabon, Phillippine Islands. She is a graduate of Mt. St. Joseph's College, Cincinnati.
Sister Marie Juliette (Alma Putfoff), of Dayton, Ohio, is a teacher at St. Anthony's Convent School, Kalihi, Kai, Oahu, T. H.
Sister M. Jude (M. Teresa Babione), Fremont, Ohio, is a teacher at the Maryknoll Center in Dairen, Manchukuo.
Sister M. Aquinas (Sarah McKenna), of Cleveland, is with the Japanese Mission School in Los Angeles: Sister Elizabeth Marie ( Elizabeth Bumbach).
595
WOMEN OF OHIO
Fairport Harbor, is at Maryknoll Sanatorium, Monrovia, Cal .; Sister Anita (Anna Fritz), of Frank, Ohio, does household work at the preparatory seminary, Mountain View, Cal.
Sister M. Dorothea (Victoria Smith), Tiffin, Ohio; Sister M. Alacoque (Rose Karst), Cleveland; Sister M. Carolyn (Lillian Puls), Cincinnati, are engaged in clerical work at the Maryknoll motherhouse at Maryknoll. N. Y., and Sister Rachel (Agnes Jackson), Mansfield, Ohio, is doing clerical work at St. Paul's Hospital, Manila, Phillippine Islands. Sister M. Catherine (Helen A. Carter), of Norwood, Ohio, is assistant superior at Maryknoll convent, Clark Summit, Pa .; Sister Rose Miriam (Margaret Dagg). is a student at the Maryknoll Training School, and Sister Lillian Antoinette (Lillian Kiel- basinski), of Toledo, is a nurse at the Maryknoll Novitiate.
CHRISTCHILD SOCIETY
Since 1916 Cleveland Catholic women, members of the Christchild society, have been carrying on a piece of work that is fulfilling the objectives laid down by the foundress, Miss Mary Merrick, 53 years ago. It is to provide layettes for needy mothers, first communion outfits for needy girls, and especially to interest themselves in the care of needy children.
Miss Merrick, an invalid since early childhood, has continued to be the leader of this organization which she founded in Washington, D. C., in 1886.
It did not take on organization form however until 1896 and in 1905 it was incorporated "to improve by useful instruction and charitable relief the conditions of the poor children of the District of Columbia."
Miss Merrick is regarded as the pioneer in social welfare work, as we know it today.
It all came about because, during the Christmas season, Miss Merrick asked a small colored boy who ran errands for the family to write a letter to the Christchild and to tell Him what was wanted for Christmas. The little boy not only wrote a letter for himself, but for all of his brothers and sisters and his playmates and so as not to disappoint any of them, Miss Merrick asked the help of her friends in giving at least one gift to each child in honor of the Christchild.
When the society was incorporated its program was divided into three parts-Health, Character Building and Relief.
The late Mrs. Mabel Higgins Mattingly, a former member of the staff of the School of Social Science of Western Reserve University and later direc- tor of the School of Social Service of Fordham University, New York, came to Cleveland in 1916 to reside. While attending Trinity college in Washington, D. C., she became interested in social welfare work, and was particularly impressed by the work of the Christchild society in Washington. She sug- gested similar type of work for Cleveland Catholic women.
596
WOMEN OF OHIO
There were 12 who met with Mrs. Mattingly. Among them the following served as president : Miss Florence Mason, now assistant director of the Catholic Charities Bureau, Cleveland; Miss Genevieve Maloney, assistant director of Merrick Settlement House; and Mrs. Norma Brennen Cogan, Mrs. Isabel Dittoe O'Reilly, Mrs. Henrietta Weatherhead Hendrickson, Mrs. Adele Farron Hurst and Mrs. Ethel Monroe Van Allen. Mrs. Mattingly was the first president.
From providing Christmas programs and gifts to needy children in institu- tions the work extended to service units during the World War, then to the making of layettes for needy mothers, and providing complete First Com- munion outfits for girls. "Everything new for the new baby" is the slogan of the members, and a complete layette even to the washcloth and soap is provided. No two dresses are alike for the first communicants. Although not a Community Fund Agency it cooperates with all children's agencies within the Welfare Federation and with the city relief agencies.
With the close of the World War, funds left over in the treasury of the National Catholic War Council were allotted to various cities for the purpose of establishing centers for a post-war reconstruction program. Cleveland was given its share and a Social Service Settlement was established in one of the congested centers of Cleveland. The settlement house was named Merrick House for Miss Merrick, and the Christchild society members who were en- trusted with the direction of organizing the settlement work have continued their interest in this work, although it is now a Community Fund agency.
They assisted in the development of the Nutrition Council, now a part of the school health program of the City of Cleveland, and also assisted in the pioneer work of Rosemary Home for Crippled Children, financing its original library, providing motor service and sewing needs for the Home.
Others who have served as officers have been Mrs. E. J. Schroeter, Mrs. Paul Zens, Mrs. H. R. Sullivan, Mrs. J. H. McGuinness, Mrs. Budd Bronson, Mrs. C. V. Pattison, Mrs. J. E. Cogan and Mrs. W. C. Mckeon. Mrs. William Parks is now president.
THE FIRST CATHOLIC SLOVAK LADIES UNION OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The First Catholic Slovak Ladies Union of U. S. A. came into existence in 1892 when six Cleveland women of Slovak birth met with the Rev. Stephen Furdek, one of the first Slovak priests to come to America to minister to the spiritual needs of his people. The society was incorporated Oct. 18, 1899. At that time these objectives were set forth: To promote the temporal and spiritual welfare of all of its members and more particularly :
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.