Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2008 Ministries in Black and White: The Catholic Sisters of St. Augustine, Florida, 1859-1920 Barbara E. (Barbara Elizabeth) Mattick Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES MINISTRIES IN BLACK AND WHITE: THE CATHOLIC SISTERS OF ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA, 1859-1920 By BARBARA E. MATTICK A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2008 Copyright © 2008 Barbara E. Mattick All Rights Reserved The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Barbara E. Mattick defended on March 24, 2008. ______________________________ Elna C. Green Professor Directing Dissertation ______________________________ Amy L. Koehlinger Outside Committee Member ______________________________ Glen H. Doran Committee Member ______________________________ Maxine D. Jones Committee Member ______________________________ Joe M. Richardson Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I could never have completed this dissertation without the encouragement and support of many people. I am indebted to Dr. Edward Keuchel who introduced me to the Sisters of St. Joseph by way of his work on Sister Mary Ann. He generously gave me his entire research file on her. With Ed’s retirement, Dr. Elna Green became my major professor, and introduced me to women’s history, a new field since I began my academic career back in the 1960s. Dr. Maxine Jones’ classes on black history also opened up to me whole new perspectives on American history. While writing a seminar paper on the 1888 yellow fever epidemic in Jacksonville for Dr. Joe Richardson’s seminar on social history, I rediscovered the Sisters of St. Joseph, first introduced to me by Ed Keuchel. The Sisters nursed yellow fever patients. Deciding the Sisters were much more intriguing, I began over six years of satisfying research. Central to this study has been the support I received from Sister Thomas Joseph McGoldrick, SSJ, archivist for the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine. She very graciously opened the archives to me, introducing me to the remarkable letters the Sisters wrote back to their Motherhouse in Le Puy, France, in the early years of their ministry in Florida. The letters are a treasure, and I am pleased that Sister Thomas Joseph has recently published Beyond the Call, which includes many of the letters, making them available to the public. I am pleased, too, to have been able to contribute to the gathering of copies of letters that were missing from the collection. In March 2004, with support from the Office of Graduate Studies’ Dissertation Research Grant Committee, I went to the Sisters of St. Joseph’s archives at the Motherhouse in Le Puy, France, adding to my research files and completing the collection at the Sisters’ archives in St. Augustine. Critical to the research in France was Sister Jacqueline Pirot, a Sister of St. Joseph from Aurillac, France, who gave nearly two weeks of her time to assist me with my research at the Motherhouse. Her brother Jean-Pierre even met me at the airport in Paris and saw that I got on the correct train to Le Puy. I am also grateful for a J. Leitch Wright, Jr. Dissertation Travel Award and a Morris Endowment Summer Research Award that funded trips to Savannah and St. Augustine. Thanks also go to Dr. Richardson who provided copies of letters of the American Missionary Association teachers and ministers who came to Florida. Their letters, iii paired with those of the Sisters of St. Joseph, provide a vehicle to compare the two groups’ work at a very personal level. Early on in my research, I contacted Dr. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese at Emory University. She told me of the History of Women Religious Conference, a triennial gathering for the presentation of papers on the history of women in religious orders. I am grateful to the Conference for allowing me to present two papers, at the 2004 and 2007 meetings. Special encouragement came from Diane Batts Morrow, Carol Coburn, and Sisters Pat Byrne and Karen Kennelly. Besides Sister Thomas Joseph, several other librarians, archivists, and historians provided valuable assistance: Gillian Brown, archivist for the Diocese of Savannah; Flo Turcotte, who went beyond the call of duty, and Bruce Chappell at the P.K. Yonge Special Collections at the George Smathers Library at the University of Florida, Gainesville; Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, who graciously provided copies of letters between Mother Katharine Drexel and Bishop John Moore; Charles Tingley, librarian at the St. Augustine Historical Society; Susan Parker, former colleague at the Florida Department of State and now Executive Director of the St. Augustine Historical Society; David Nolan, historian in St. Augustine; and the wonderful staff at the State Library of Florida who obtained all those interlibrary loan requests for me. All of this work was completed while working full time for the Division of Historical Resources, Bureau of Historic Preservation. I am grateful to Frederick Gaske, the Director of the Division and my “boss,” and for my colleagues at the Bureau for being so supportive of these efforts. Thanks to Brian Yates, who created the map for Figure 8, Carl Shiver for computer help, and Joshua Youngblood who created the necessary pdfs. Needless to say, my thanks and love abound to my longsuffering husband, Stan, who prayed me through when it just seemed too tough to keep going, and to the Lord, who answered those prayers so faithfully. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures vi Abstract vii INTRODUCTION 1 1. PREPARING THE WAY: THE SISTERS OF MERCY 18 2. “NOTRE CHÈRE MISSION D’AMÈRIQUE:” THE FRENCH SISTERS 37 OF ST. JOSEPH’S MISSION IN FLORIDA 3. THE COMPETITION FOR BLACK SOULS AND MINDS: THE SISTERS OF ST. JOSEPH VERSUS THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION AND OTHER PROTESTANTS 71 4. FACING THE YELLOW JACK: THE NORTHEAST FLORIDA YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMICS OF 1877 AND 1888 100 5. THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, THE END OF THE FRENCH MISSION TO FLORIDA 123 6. THE POLITICS OF ANTI-CATHOLICISM AND RACISM IN EARLY 20TH CENTURY FLORIDA 158 CONCLUSION 185 APPENDICES 194 BIBLIOGRAPHY 204 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 218 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Bishop Augustin Verot 35 Figure 2. Sisters of Mercy’s St. Mary’s Convent, St. Augustine 36 Figure 3. Map of France showing location of Le Puy 65 Figure 4. Le Puy, France 66 Figure 5. The first Sisters of St. Joseph from Le Puy, France 67 Figure 6. Aviles Street behind the Sisters of St. Joseph’s convent, 1870s 68 Figure 7. The Sisters of St. Joseph’s first class, 1867 69 Figure 8. Nineteenth-century foundations of the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine 70 Figure 9. St. Benedict the Moor School, St. Augustine 99 Figure 10. Bishop John Moore 122 Figure 11. Mother Theresa Joseph Brown 154 Figure 12. May Mann with her class at St. Joseph’s Academy, 1880 155 Figure 13. Mother Lazarus L’hostal 156 Figure 14. Sister Mary Ann Hoare 157 Figure 15. Bishop William Kenny 183 Figure 16. Bishop Michael J. Curley 184 vi ABSTRACT “Ministries in Black and White: the Catholic Sisters of St. Augustine, 1859-1920” discusses the work of two orders of women religious, the Sisters of Mercy, who taught young white women in a convent school from 1859-1870; and the Sisters of St. Joseph, who came from France in 1866 to teach newly freed blacks after the Civil War, the only white Catholic order to do so. They remain an active order in Florida, with a Motherhouse still in St. Augustine. A significant part of the dissertation is a comparison of the Sisters of St. Joseph’s work against that of their major rivals, missionaries from the American Missionary Association. Using letters written by the Sisters back to their Motherhouse in Le Puy, France, the dissertation provides a rare view of the lives of these Catholic Sisters in St. Augustine and other parts of Florida, from the mid-nineteenth century through the era of anti-Catholicism in the early twentieth-century South. It carries the story through the pioneer years of the Sisters of St. Joseph’s work in Florida. In the telling of their story, the dissertation addresses the idea of domesticity, the proper role of women, and how it was reinforced in Catholic terms by women who seemingly defied the ideal. vii INTRODUCTION In September 1866, shortly after the end of the Civil War, at the behest of the Catholic Bishop over Florida, Augustin Verot, eight Catholic Sisters of St. Joseph from Le Puy, France, went to St. Augustine to teach the newly freed slaves in Florida. Arriving in the “Ancient City” of St. Augustine, they were assisted by Sisters of Mercy whom Verot had asked to come from the North shortly before the Civil War to teach white Catholic girls. The French Sisters’ mission was to capture the former slaves’ souls, to save them from the “heretical” teachings of Protestant missionaries who were already at work in Florida, and to educate blacks to be able to live in a free society as good Catholics. This dissertation tells the story of the efforts of both of these women religious' congregations in Florida and provides some analyses of their work through the lenses of the history of blacks, women, Florida, and Catholicism in the South, from the mid- nineteenth century to about 1920. Although since the 1980s there has been a growing interest in evaluating the impact of the Catholic Church on American history, relatively little has been written on the Catholic Church in the South, especially after the Civil War, and women's history has been dominated by analyses of Protestant women from the northeast.1 This northeastern view emphasizes the development of networks and bonds between women in urban settings through voluntary associations, mother's clubs, and charitable works.