2 Rooted in the Church

2 ROOTED IN THE CHURCH Three times during that bitter January of 1821 death stalked the Valley, claiming Mother Elizabeth Seton on the 4th, Sister Mary Ann Butler on the 14th, and Sister Victoria Brady on the 19th. Three times funeral processions wound past the stable to the cemetery; three times the hounds Sultan and Sailor moaned their mournful accompaniment to the chant of the "In Paradisum." Having claimed the Mother, death seemed to flaunt its power over her daughters. But in the kingdom of God it is always springtime; and so the Community went on. In the same letter which notified sisters on distant missions of Mother Seton's death, Father John Dubois asked each sister to suggest names of a possible successor. From the names suggested, Dubois and the Council would choose two for each office, to be submitted to the sisters at or near the Motherhouse for voting during the election. This method was stip ulated in Article XIII of the Constitutions: The Daughters of Charity being destined to be scattered in small groups over various and perhaps distant parts of America...it will be impossible for all the Sisters to be present at the meetings held in the Mother House either for elections or other affairs ...For this reason it is provided that in such a case the Sisters not distant more than two or three days journey from the Mother House who have eight years of vocation...shall be the natural deputies of the whole company to attend the same elections, and other like meetings convoked on extraordinary and important affairs in which the welfare of the whole body is concerned...and all the others shall conform to the solutions adopted in the said meetings .... 1 In the election of 1821 the sisters selected Sister Rose White to succeed as Mother, and retained in office those who had been elected to the Council 14 July 1820: Sisters Xavier Clark, assistant; Augustine Decount, procuratrix; Susan Clossey, treasurer. Sisters Xavier and Augustine were both fairly recent arrivals, women in 31 their thirties, capable, experienced, and advanced in spirituality. Both had been inspired to join the Community by Sister Rose's example, one in Philadelphia, the other in New York. Expansion in Dioceses Already Served Rose returned to the Valley in March, having been away seven years. A violent storm made the passage from Philadelphia to Balti more a rough one, but Rose's son Charles- grown to young manhood, a student at Saint Mary's College, Baltimore-met the sisters with a carriage for the remainder of the journey. Because of the deep snow it took them two full days to travel the fifty miles from Baltimore to Emmitsburg. When they arrived, the Council lost no time in meeting to handle business that had been deferred by Mother Seton's illness and death. Baltimore: 1821 The Council's first major decision was to respond favorably to a pending request for sisters for Saint Mary's Free School in Balti more. Dubois, with his usual care for details, notified the president of the Association of Charitable Ladies that the sisters were to be provided with a house, $100 a year living expenses, and shoes. If this sum proved to be more than needed, the surplus would be returned. The house on the corner of North and Mulberry Streets was a small poor one, furnished with an assortment of second-hand chairs and tables, a cot and a double bed with a mattress half its size. Within six months several orphan girls were sharing this house with the sisters. Since there was no hired help, the sisters did the cleaning, cooking and laundry as well as teaching. Sister Benedicta Parsons had been chosen as sister servant. Father Louis Regis Deluol, the Sulpician appointed as confessor to the sisters, asked her why she was called sister servant. "It means that I'm to be the servant of all," she replied. Since she was the first of many sisters he was to direct in his long association with the Community, he always referred to her as his eldest daughter. She signed her letters to him with a simple "Bene." 32 Before long the sisters from Saint Mary's were teaching at the Cathedral-a pay school and a boarding school-as well as at Saint Mary's Free School, which soon had more than 200 pupils. A second free school was added for the immigrant poor of Saint Patrick's Parish, Fell's Point. Beginnings in Health Care: Baltimore, 1822 Believing that education would long be the principal employment of the American Sisters of Charity, Archbishop Carroll had written to Elizabeth Seton in 1811: A century at least will pass before the exigencies and habits of this country will require and hardly admit of the charitable exercises towards the sick sufficient to employ any number of Sisters out of our largest cities... 2 Before a dozen years had passed, the Archbishop's prediction was proved to be too conservative. In May 1822 Dubois received a letter asking for sisters to staff the newly established Baltimore Inftrmary. Doctor Granville Sharp Pattison was impressed with the quality of care given to the sick children in Saint Mary's Asylum. Named director of the new inftrmary which was being added as a training center for students of the medical college of the University of Maryland, Pattison wanted the sisters to manage it. In his letter of acceptance, Dubois specifted that Pattison alone should have control over the sisters. Under the authority of the Board of Trustees, they were to have complete charge of the man agement and supervision of the work, including authority to hire and ftre workers· as needed, to admit and discharge patients, to make rules and regulations for the house, to handle expenses for supplies, food and fuel. Male attendants, selected by the sisters and subject to them, were to give the necessary physical care to male patients. The sisters were to be boarded in the Inftrmary; each was to receive $42 a year for her maintenance. Their duties, as spelled out by Dubois, would include corporal care of the sick, spiritual instruction of persons in health and sickness, bleeding, giving reme dies, furnishing a proper diet to the patients, maintaining cleanliness, preparing the sick for death, laying out the dead, and 33 providing means for decent burial. Care, such as food and clothing, might also be extended to poor persons who were not sick, whether at home or in prison. In closing, Dubois wrote enthusiastically: I cannot express the joy they felt at the opening which your charity affords for the exercise oftheir zeal. Now they feel that they are true Sisters of Charity. 3 Several factors led the sisters into health care so early in their American history: one was the reputation of the European Daughters of Charity in health care. The Community at Emmitsburg was not only following the Rule of Saint Vincent de Paul, but also patterning its service on what their sisters in Europe did. There were, too, strong medical influences in the lives and experiences of the sisters. Mother Seton's father and brother-in-law ranked as eminent doctors in New York, as did Sister Joanna Smith's brother in Baltimore. Brute's knowledge of medicine was in evidence in his guidance of the young Community. Illnesses in the Seton family, among the boarders, and within the Community brought the sisters into frequent contact with Doctor Daniel Moore of Emmitsburg and the learned Doctor Pierre Chatard of Balti more. Among books passed down in the Community are a French medical textbook dated 1823 and a hand-written manual on spiri tual care of the sick, partly translated from the French and partly gleaned from instructions given by Sister Xavier Clark. The Baltimore InfIrmary was completed in October 1823; the following month the sisters began their fIrst work in a university hospital. Sister Joanna Smith was the fIrst sister servant, assisted by Sisters Ann Gruber, Adele Salva, and later Appolonia Graver, Ambrosia Magner and Veronica Gouch. By 1832 the InfIrmary had three physicians and four surgeons. There was a special ward for diseases of the eye. Another for seamen was expanded into a sepa rate marine hospital, temporarily under the care of the sisters in 1827. The doctors practicing at the Baltimore InfIrmary were those associated with the faculty of medicine at the University of Maryland. Working under their supervision, the sisters learned much about illnesses, wounds and remedies, developing nursing skills that would shortly be put to use in Catholic hospitals. 34 Frederick: 1824 In 1824 John McElroy, S.J., pastor in Frederick, Maryland, about twenty-five miles from Emmitsburg, asked for sisters for a free school. Sisters Margaret George and Rosalia Green were sent. The house provided was a one-story frame building, very poor. The one large room with a stove was intended for the schoolroom. Adjoining it were a tiny sleeping room and a windowless kitchen. Water was drawn from a well in the yard. When school opened, eighty applicants came; but the schoolroom could hold just fifty. McElroy desired only a free school; but when orphans were entrusted to the sisters with no means for their support, a pay school was added. Before long the house was enlarged to include boarders as well as the orphans and day students (both pay and free) and a school for small boys.* Instruction for slaves was provided on Sundays. In 1846 this school was transferred to the Visitation Sisters. Washington: 1825 Another request for sisters to staff a free school in the Baltimore archdiocese came from Father William Matthews of Washington, D.C.

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