USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume II > Part 4
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Father Fenwick had already earned for himself the title of "Itinerant Preacher," and "Apostle of Ohio," because of his con- tinuous travels throughout the State, riding horseback, and seeking out "lost sheep" in the Ohio wilderness. He was known to be absent from his convent home at Springfield, Kentucky (a site which he purchased from his own patrimony in 1806), for a period of two years at a time, with his only shelter the forests of Ohio, and his only companions, his faithful horse, his breviary, and his priest's equipment carried in a knapsack over his saddle.
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Pope Pius VII signed the papers June 19, 1821, declaring all of Ohio and Michigan included in the territory of the new diocese. Means of communication were not prompt in those days. It was months later before formal word reached Father Fenwick, and it was not until January of 1822, that he was consecrated Bishop of the Catholic Church and placed in charge of the new diocese of Ohio, with the episcopal see established at Cincinnati.
It was Pope Pius' successor, Pope Leo XII, who was to give spiritual and financial assistance that would enable Father Fenwick to lay a strong foundation for religion in the State of Ohio. However, it was not until the arrival of the Sisters of Charity in Cincinnati from Emmittsburg, Maryland, eight years later, in October of 1829,
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followed three months later by the Sisters of Saint Dominic from Springfield, Kentucky, who located in Somerset, Ohio, that women's work in the development of the Catholic Church in Ohio became an integral part of the Church's program.
It is interesting to observe that this work was accomplished through organized groups composed of women who had foresaken all the pleasures of the world, who had voluntarily forfeited the joys and the pleasures of family life and friends, and who had dedicated them- selves entirely to the services of God in religion.
Both of these religious communities were of American origin. The Sisters of Charity was founded in 1808 by the illustrious Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton of New York, a widow who was a convert to the Catholic Faith from the Episcopalian religion. Upon the death of her husband in Italy, whence she had accompanied him with their five children in the interests of his health, Mrs. Seton found it necessary to return to America and to seek some source of income for rearing her children. A small school was founded by her in Baltimore, Mary- land. Soon other women of scholastic training equal to Mrs. Seton's, joined with her to assist her in teaching and from this group of women was founded the Sisters of Charity.
The motive for the organization of such a community is best ex- pressed by Mrs. Seton : "To honor our Lord Jesus Christ as the Source and Model of all Charity, by rendering to Him every temporal and spiritual service in our power, in the person of the poor, the sick, the prisoners, the insane, and others in distress."
One needs but to read the history of the Sisters of Charity, its growth and development here in Ohio, and its expansion beyond Ohio's border, to fully appreciate how faithfully have the Sisters of Charity lived up to the ideal prescribed by their Foundress.
The Sisters of St. Dominic, while an American foundation of only eight years organization, having been founded in Springfield, Kentucky, in 1822 by Reverend Thomas Wilson, O.P., may be traced back to the early part of the 13th century, when St. Dominic, a Spanish priest, established in 1206 a monastery at Prouille to protect women from the evils of heresy and the machinations of heretics.
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The Order of Preachers, which is another name for the Dominican Order of Priests, was founded by Saint Dominic also as an agency for uprooting heresy and defending the Catholic Faith, principally against the Albigenses heresy.
Both of these religious communities were followed in quick sue- cession by other religious groups of women, mostly from Europe, and immediately these groups also became an important and integral part in the early building of Ohio. Their influence grew to such an extent that in less than a generation of time, other foundations were formed from these Ohio foundations with the result that the religious frontiers moved westward from Ohio. Today there is scarcely a state west of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio River that is not now or that has not been the beneficiary at some time or another of these pioneer foundations in Ohio. Their work has penetrated to the furthermost points of Alaska and beyond the seas into China, Japan, India and Egypt.
Their achievements in Ohio is best illustrated by the many or- phanages for the orphaned and dependent child; by hospitals of all kinds including those for the incurable, the sick poor of all races and creeds ; by homes for the aged poor unable to pay, and for the aged; for the delinquent girl; for the unwed mother and her child. In fact, no type of service which is known to heal the wounds or to alleviate the suffering of mankind has been overlooked. The soldiers on the battlefields, the prisoners in the jails, those ill of contagious diseases in pest houses and other isolated hospitals, even the sick and isolated poor of the mountain regions bordering on Ohio, reaching into Ken- tucky, have been the beneficiaries of the devoted service of these women in religion.
Father Fenwick, on a borrowed $300, went to Rome for help. He arrived there on September 26, 1823, two days before the election of Pope Leo XII. He remained in Rome for the enthroning of Pope Leo, which took place October 5, and the following day he had his first audience with the new Pope, in which he poured out his heart, imploring assistance for the new diocese.
Bishop Fenwick knew Ohio well, having first come into it as early as 1808 or 1809. During his travels he had come in contact with mem- bers of his Church, scattered all over the state.
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The newly elected Pope provided him with two priests to assist in Ohio; the equal of twelve hundred American dollars for traveling expenses, a trunk of equipment used for religious ceremony valued at $1,000, and a letter of introduction to the secretary of the newly organized Society for the Propagation of the Faith which had been established in Lyons, France, in 1822, just a short time before.
Perhaps we should say that right here women began to play a role in the Catholic Church in Ohio, for it was a French woman, PAULINE JARICOT of Lyons, France, who, in 1820, surrounded herself with a group of poor French shop girls to set the group to the task of soliciting from their friends, one cent a week in France for the Mission program of the Catholic Church. She had received a letter from her brother, a seminarian, in which he told of the plight of the missionary priests of the religious order of which he was a member. It was primarily to assist members of her brother's re- ligious order that she began this task. However, the idea spread and the society which she founded is known today as the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which has its central headquarters in Rome, and which has branch offices in every Catholic diocese of the world. From this tiny seed planted in 1820 by Pauline Jaricot, it took root, and on May 3, 1822, other groups were formed in other European countries and were combined into a central headquarters with a scope for service that today embraces the whole world.
It was to Pauline Jaricot's group that Bishop Fenwick presented his letter of introduction from Pope Leo XII, and it was from this group that financial assistance to the extent of eight thousand francs and a promise of annual allocations was obtained. This society con- tinued its financial assistance to Ohio until 1869 and during this time, the equivalent of thousands of dollars, in francs, was given.
Just as the religious sisterhoods came into Ohio as missionaries, and later, sent missionaries from their Ohio convent into other fields where the Catholic Church had need for them, so, too, the dioceses in Ohio, those organized later, Cleveland, Toledo, and Columbus, with the Cincinnati diocese, through the larger society for the Propagation of the Faith, which sprung from Pauline Jaricot's group have more than repaid the financial assistance given so generously in the pioneer
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days, and are now assisting in the spread of the Catholic Faith in other lands. All because of the ingenuity, the vision, and the humble efforts of a woman-Pauline Jaricot of Lyons, France.
Bishop Fenwick visited other countries of Europe pleading the cause of his new diocese and on his return to America in October, 1824, he had to his credit : 3,213 pounds in an England bank; ten trunks of religious articles valued at 21,000 francs which had been shipped to America; two other priests, in addition to the two assigned by the Pope, and a promise from SISTER PAUL, a Sister of Mercy from France, who volunteered to come to establish a convent and a school.
The new Bishop had sent word on from Europe to Cincinnati of the coming of Sister Paul. Largely, perhaps, out of curiosity, the residents of Cincinnati turned out to welcome her upon her arrival in Cincinnati in September of 1823. She had sailed from France in July, and so it was many weeks of travel over rough seas, then by stage and river, before she reached her destination. A woman wearing the strange garb of a nun must have created a furore in Cincinnati that day in that September of long ago.
Only one familiar with the life of a religious in a convent and with the duties of her religious calling can fully appreciate the sacrifice of Sister Paul in coming to America. She left the security which her convent home assured her; she left her family and her friends to travel unnumbered miles alone, away from friends and surroundings which she was never to see again. Yet she did what countless thousands of women have done since the third century, when the first convent for women was established, even to the present day, when Catholic young women continue to respond to the call of their Divine Master, "Come, follow Me!" and leave all, father, mother, family and friends, to dedi- cate their life to His service.
Sister Paul was only twenty-two years of age. She had scarcely located in Cincinnati when she was joined by ELIZA ROSE POWELL of Springfield, Ky., who had studied with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Ky.
Miss Powell was of the same age. Together they opened the first school in Ohio under Catholic auspices at Cincinnati, with a school enrollment of twenty-five. Miss Powell never became a nun, but taught
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in Catholic owned schools in Cincinnati, Canton and other cities in Ohio. Three years later, Sister Paul died following a long illness, and her dream of establishing a convent that would attract other women to dedicate their lives to religion died with her.
However, this was to be deferred a short time only, as the Sisters of Charity of Emmitsburg, Md., had consented in October of 1829 to come to Cincinnati in response to numerous requests of Bishop Fen- wick.
Again it was in no spirit of adventure or with no assurance of a life of luxury or a life of comfort, that prompted the first group of four Sisters of Charity to locate in Cincinnati.
Bishop Fenwick in his letter to the superior stated his need for Sisters to care for orphaned children and by way of inducement wrote to say that "A Mr. M. P. Cassilly and others would provide a good and comfortable house, rent free, together with the sum of $200.00 annually towards their support, and a refund, if required of all ex- penses of their journey from Emmitsburg to Cincinnati."
The Reilly family of Cincinnati extended hospitality to the Sisters until the promised house of Mr. Cassilly was ready to receive them, which was some two weeks later. The home was a two story frame house, opposite the cathedral on Sycamore St., and soon became over- crowded with the advent of the five orphans who were awaiting ad- mittance and the six students who enrolled in the school, which was now also part of the Sisters' program.
Prior to the opening of the orphanage by the Sisters of Charity, three Poor Clare nuns had come from Belgium in 1826, to care for the orphans and had joined with Sister Paul in the school work of the city by establishing a school with seventy pupils and assisting also in giving religious instructions on Sunday to poor children. Two of these, SISTER FRANCOISE and SISTER VICTOIRE remained only until 1828 when they left for Pittsburgh to locate there, and, the third, SISTER ADOLPHINE, remained in Cincinnati. Later she obtained release from her religious vows, donned the garb of the women of that day, assumed her family name of Melangie, and became a director of the Cathedral choir. Within a period of seven years, from 1829 to 1836, it was necessary for the Sisters of Charity to change residence three
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different times, to meet the growing demands and within this period, they had established their convent, an academy for girls, and the orphanage for girls.
The Sisters of St. Dominic, an American foundation which was founded in 1822 at Springfield, Ky., as an auxiliary of the Dominican Order of priests which were established by Bishop Fenwick at Spring- field in 1806, was next to come to Ohio, falling in line at Somerset, Ohio, at a site which had been made possible through a gift of land in 1818 from CATHERINE DITTOE and her husband Jacob.
The Dominican Sisters came to Somerset just three months after the arrival of the Sisters of Charity at Cincinnati. They left their Kentucky monastery on Jan. 11, 1830 and did not arrive at Somerset until Feb. 5, 1830, but by the 25th of Feb., they took a small house which had been purchased for them, and on April 5, opened the first novitiate in Ohio to become the place of training for young women desirous of devoting their life to religion. Before the close of that year, the school which they established was incorporated under the laws of Ohio and known as "St. Mary's Female Literary Society."
The school, first established as a day school, and, later, a day and boarding school, attracted pupils from as far away as Wheeling, W. Va., as well as from cities in Ohio and by the winter of 1831, just a little less than two years after their establishment in Somerset, a three story convent and school had to be built.
The first novice was ROSE LYNCH of Zanesville, Ohio, whose three sisters, whose brother, and whose mother, following widowhood, became members of the Dominican order. The brother joined the men's order at Springfield, Ky., while the sisters joined the Somerset convent. It was at a time when Sister Rose Lynch was Superior, between the years 1862 and 1873, that her mother joined the order and took the name of Sister Monica.
On the occasion of his elevation to the Bishopric in January, 1822, Bishop Fenwick sent to the Cardinal-prefect of Propaganda in Rome, a survey of the Catholic Church in Ohio. Included in his letter was a statement that "Ohio is 264 miles long and 281 miles wide; having 581,434 inhabitants of which 6,000 are Catholics, scattered throughout the States."
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He stated that he built a church in Somerset in 1819, when there were nine families living in that vicinity. "The majority of the in- habitants were sober, industrious and desirous of religious instruc- tions." The Catholics entrusted to his care were poor Germans, many Swiss, and Irish, all of whom, as was the frequent custom of poor immigrants to America, had committed themselves as bond-servants for five or six years (in this instance to a shipowner) in order to defray their expenses to America."
Thus, we see the humble beginning of the Catholic Church in Ohio, when the first attempt of organization was begun.
When we survey the state today, we find four dioceses where before there was only one, a large Catholic population in the State; four Cathedrals ; many Churches ; 42 convents for women; many parish owned parish schools, all taught by members of the religious sister- hoods, who have their motherhouses in Ohio, and other Sisters whose motherhouses are in other states; schools, high schools, and academies, owned and conducted by the Sisters; colleges owned and conducted by them; elementary schools; hospitals for those who cannot pay as well as for those who can pay all or part; business institutes; girls homes ; boys homes; and homes for the deaf. These are the tangible evidences of more than a century's accummulation of good works by Catholic Sisterhoods in Ohio. But their major contributions are in- tangible. They are written in the book of Life, and are known only to God, or to those who were the immediate beneficiaries of their teachings, of their ministrations in orphanages, in hospitals, in prisons, and in every place where there was human suffering. They are no respector of persons, class, creed or color.
While the first two religious communities to come to Ohio, the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of St. Dominic, were composed of American born women, other religious communities that followed al- most in quick succession came from Europe ; France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Ireland, being among the countries. These women came bearing with them centuries of traditions from their own con- vents, some of which were flourishing long before Ohio as a state was ever dreamed of, or before the Northwest territory was discovered.
They were convent bred women, highly educated in the arts and in the sciences, and most of them were reared in an atmosphere of
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culture, refinement, and with conveniences of living, ordinary for that day, but luxuries in comparison with anything that a new country and new people, total strangers to them, and in some instances, even antagonistic to them, could possibly offer. Yet these women foresook all and of their own free will came to Ohio, to give of their all, in building out of the wilderness, part of a new world and a new people!
Theirs was a different motive than that which urged the pioneer women of the New England colonies and of Maryland and Virginia. Their new world was to be a spiritual world, with the God whom they served as its Ruler. They planned to build spiritually as well as materially. They came alone, with little funds, barely enough to see them safely to Ohio. They contented themselves with the meagerest facilities which the small Catholic colonies could afford; they covered the same route from the east as did the pioneer women, weeks of travel by coach and by river, which followed many more weeks of rough sea voyage.
The pioneer woman, fine as was her motive of building anew for herself and her family, had the companionship of her husband, the security which he offered her and their children. In many instances, the trek westward was made in groups so that while the women came into strange lands, they were not among strangers. They did suffer great hardships, these women; they lived in terror of the Indians and of wild animals from the woods, but they looked forward to a future of schools for the education of their children, of churches in which they might worship their God according to the dictates of their own con- sciences, to a plentitude of food tilled from the soil, to employment that would come from the clearance of the forests, the building of roads and of canals. With all of this, they were not alone; they had their husbands, their children, their parents, their relatives or former neighbors living side by side. The log cabin huts, rudely built though they were, meant home and a degree of security to these pioneer women.
As one traces the entrance of religious orders into Ohio, one quickly observes the growth of the Church in that area, where the Sisters began their establishment. They accepted the most humble of surroundings, erected therein an altar to the honor and glory of God, and this spot, bare of everything but absolute necessities, became their
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convent home, and, in many instances, a school for the education of the children within the area of the convent.
It is from these humble beginnings that the Catholic Sisterhoods of Ohio have sprung, and as the state of Ohio grew, and in its develop- ment, the population grew accordingly by immigration from the eastern colonies and from Europe, the Catholic Church grew proportionately. With such growth came the need of helpers in the field of religion in Ohio.
The religious Sisterhoods have marched down through the past century of years in triumphant procession, one religious order after another, taking its place and falling in line, as the need for its services arose. Wherever the need was the greatest and wherever it could serve to the best advantage, there was always a religious community ready to respond. Their contribution to the development of Ohio, however, is not alone in the buildings of brick, stone and mortar which dot Ohio, and which include hospitals, academies and colleges for women, social settlement houses, schools for the deaf mute; business girls homes and club houses, convent homes, but is to be found also in the sound educational programs which they carry on in the parish schools in the four Catholic dioceses in Ohio, whose episcopal sees are located in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo. In the edu- cational field alone, just teaching in the parish elementary and high schools of them, their financial contribution to education represents a very large saving to the State of Ohio. Aside from this service of education in the parochial schools, there is another financial con- tribution in the number of their own buildings which they own for the higher education of women, either in academy or college, as well as the number of religious owned hospital buildings. Many more millions of dollars are represented here. It is, however, their contribution to the religious, cultural, social and civic development, a contribution, which it is beyond human ability to appraise, that earns for these noble women high places in the Halls of Fame, if such ever be established to properly acknowledge the work of Women in Ohio.
For summing up all the efforts of these women in religious sister- hoods, there has been but the one objective-to seek their own salvation and to work for the salvation of others.
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Long before the establishment of the Catholic diocese of Ohio, women began to weave their tapestry of self sacrifice, devotion, and love for religion in Ohio. Each succeeding generation of Catholic women down to the present day has contributed to the perfection of this design of Religion and Service in the tapestry of Life.
The Great Ordinances of 1787, granting religious freedom, and stressing importance of "RELIGION, MORALITY, AND KNOWL- EDGE" as necessary to good government and to the happiness of mankind, whereby "schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged," served as a magnet to attract many colonists from New England, Maryland, and Virginia, and from France, Germany, and Ireland. Foremost among these colonists were two families, the Boyles and Dittoes, whose names are written large in the history of the Catholic Church in Ohio.
Hugh Boyle, a native of Donegal, Ireland, was forced to flee his country in 1796, because of his conflict with the repressive laws, and to seek refuge with his uncle John Boyle at Martinsburg, Virginia. He had a fine business education and was a devout Catholic. His uncle placed him in charge of a store at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, where he came to know Neil Gillespie, a native of Scotland. He was a fre- quent visitor to the Gillespie home. Aside from the cordial hospitality and the sympathetic understanding of the two men, there was the added attraction of ELLEN GILLESPIE, the cultured, well educated daughter of Neil Gillespie. In 1798 Hugh and Ellen were married, and set out immediately for Ohio, much against Neil Gillespie's wishes, but with his blessings upon the happy pair. They first located at Chillicothe, but eventually established their home at Lancaster, Ohio in 1801, where Mr. Boyle became prominent in the business life of that section. With the conferring of state's right upon that section of the northwest territory to be known as Ohio, Boyle was named by the new state government as clerk of the Common Pleas Court and clerk also of the Supreme Court when it was in session in Fairfield County. He held this appointment until 1848 when ill health forced him to resign. Prior to this appointment he had served as justice of the peace, and county surveyor. MARIA BOYLE, a daughter, was born on New Year's day, 1801. She was to have her part in the re- ligious and civic drama of Ohio, a generation later.
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In 1802 Jacob Dittoe and his wife CATHERINE DITTOE, with his brother and brother-in-law and their families, came over the moun- tains by wagon and through the uncleared forests of Pennsylvania and Ohio to settle in Ohio. They came originally from Baltimore, Maryland and stopped enroute at Conewago, Pennsylvania to induce others of their relatives and friends to follow them. A promise was given that others would come.
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