Although Sister St. Protais would live to see many changes, she probably never dreamed in 1836 that the CSJS would need to Americanize so quickly in order to avoid anti-Catholic hostilities, to insure financial and physical survival, to recruit American novices, and to create and maintain institutions and Catholic culture throughout the United States. This was the reality for most European women’s communities that immigrated to the United States and successfully established American foundations. In her study on American sisters in the nineteenth century, Mary Ewens states, “Since Canon Law definitions of the role of nuns in the nineteenth century were based on medieval European attitudes toward women, one would expect that role conflict would occur when American women of the nineteenth century tried to live according to them and that various adjustments would have to be made to reduce the conflict. This is exactly what happened.”²

In the early nineteenth century, Catholic sisters coming from European convents rarely received the warm reception described by Sister St. Protais, or if they did it was often short-lived. For many nativists, “American” meant not only white and Anglo-Saxon but also Protestant. Except in a few eastern cities, American Catholics were a small minority in the United States until the late nineteenth century.³ However, during the three decades prior to the Civil War, with burgeoning numbers of Irish and German Catholics emigrating to America, many priests and male and female religious found themselves in settings where their patriotism was often questioned and where violence against clergy, churches, and religious was a reality of life. In 1830 The Protestant, an anti-Catholic weekly, began publication with the objective “to inculcate Gospel doctrines against Romish corruptions ... to maintain the purity and sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures against Monkish Traditions,” asserting that no article would be printed unless it promoted this goal.⁴ Although prior to the 1830s relationships between Protestants and Catholics had been good in St. Louis, The Protestant and Eli P. Lovejoy’s St. Louis Observer denounced the Catholic Church and inflamed passions that produced mobs and threats against the CSJS and other Catholic institutions up until the Civil War.⁵ Beginning in antebellum America and continuing throughout the nineteenth century, groups such as the American Protestant Association, the Know-Nothing Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and the American Protective Association had many willing members anxious to stamp out “popery.”⁶

Communities of women religious often took the brunt of anti-Catholic prejudice. As women who lived and worked in all-female environments, created and maintained schools and institutions in the public domain, wore “mysterious,” distinctive clothing, and took vows of chastity and obedience while rejecting heterosexual marriage, nuns elicited a gamut of Protestant fantasies. Alternatively seen either as captive, docile minions and concubines for male clergy or as uptight “abnormal” women, rejected by males as unfit for marriage and motherhood and allowed to run amuck as “independent” women with masculine tendencies, American sisters had to cope with gender, religious, and ethnic bigotry in a patriarchal society that limited the power and aspirations of many people according to their sex, race, church affiliation, and native birthright. Before the Civil War the CSJS and most women religious traveled in secular clothing to avoid potential insults and harassment that included death threats, convent burnings, and bodily assaults. Sister St. Protais recalled that upon arrival at the Ursuline convent in New Orleans, the sisters insisted that the CSJS change into secular clothing before going out in public because “people would think that some nuns had escape[d] from the convent.”⁷

In popular literature, stories of “captive” or “escaped” nuns promised lucrative rewards for authors and publishers. Akin to the contemporary tell-all expose, sensationalized books about convent life provided lurid and fascinating reading for a Protestant population that found nuns and their presence on American soil frightening, if not dangerous. The looting and burning of the Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1834 proved that such books could and did provoke Protestant ire of the most virulent forms.⁸

Another factor that seemed to place nuns at the flash point of anti-Catholic bigotry was related to Protestant perspectives on what was perceived to be the “feminization” of the Catholic Church. Ann Braude states that Protestant scorn of the “rich sensual environment ... the cult of saints and especially the veneration of the Virgin ... retains the anti-Catholic as well as the anti-woman bias of the standard narratives of American religion.”⁹ Viewed through a Protestant lens, religious statues, holy cards, incense, rosaries, priests in “skirts,” and nuns in religious habit symbolized this “feminization.”

The CSJS, who arrived in 1836, were not the first community of nuns to bring such visible symbols of Catholicism to the St. Louis area. The Society of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters of Loretto, the Sisters of Charity, and the Visitandines preceded the CSJS, settling in and around St. Louis and across the Mississippi River in Illinois in 1818, 1823, 1828, and 1833, respectively.¹⁰ Soon after disembarking in St. Louis, the six CSJS separated: three sisters headed for Cahokia, Illinois, a French Canadian parish, while three stayed in St. Louis, lodging with the Sisters of Charity and taking English lessons at the Sacred Heart Academy until they could move into their log cabin convent in Carondelet, a village six miles south of the city.¹¹

The sisters sent to Cahokia found there a prosperous village and a Catholic population of several hundred highly devout parishioners, who with their priest, Father Peter Doutreluingne, had provided a set of buildings in the center of the village that the sisters could use for a convent and school. Affectionately, and to add dignity to the setting, the villagers dubbed the site “The Abbey,” and the townspeople provided for all the sisters’ needs both large and small. Sister St. Protais described one “rich lady” who built the CSJS a small chapel so they could “decorate it with ornaments that they brought from France.” Likewise, a well-intentioned woman of simpler means brought the sisters “a bowl of pottage of rice gumbeau [sic] and chicken.” When she proudly put it on the table the nuns were horrified because it was Friday and they could not eat meat. The woman told them it was all right because she had only boiled the chicken in it! Although they thanked her for her kindness, after she left, the sisters “had a grand laugh at her simplicity.”

By contrast, the three sisters who opened the convent in Carondelet, Missouri (outside St. Louis), rarely experienced such devotion and prosperity. Carondelet was originally named Vide Poche (“Empty Pocket”). The sisters understood immediately the significance of the name. Their log cabin convent, set high on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, had a beautiful view, but with the exception of a cot, a table, and two chairs, the two rooms and attic were destitute of furniture. Their first meal was meager bread and cheese that they shared with the parish priest, Father Edmund Saulnier, in the rectory. When the sisters returned the next morning for breakfast, Father Saulnier informed them that he barely had enough to feed himself and they would have to fend for themselves and “beg” the parishioners for food. And, unlike their Cahokia counterparts, the Creole parishioners at Carondelet were not only poor but “had neither taste for religion or instruction.”

Although separated by the Mississippi River, the sisters in the two CSJ mission sites continued to see themselves as one community. At first it seemed that Cahokia, Illinois, would provide the financial and social advantages for success, but it was the poverty-stricken mission in Carondelet, Missouri, that became the “cradle of the institution” and birthplace of the American foundation.

Sisters on both sides of the river experienced deprivations and trials both physical and emotional that threatened their survival. The Cahokia sisters had material and social support, but the unhealthy, swampy climate and the unpredictable Mississippi River produced major setbacks for them. The three sisters were chronically ill with “fevers,” and all three spent time in Carondelet recuperating. These French women, most of whom came from comfortable, middle-class homes in France, battled illness and something even more powerful—the floods of the Mississippi. The village of Cahokia was nestled perilously close to the river, and the sisters’ “Abbey” was its victim on numerous occasions.¹²

Carondelet, located on a hill on the Missouri side of the river, provided a healthier climate for the sisters but offered deprivations of a different sort. In contrast to their experiences in France, where church and state were ordinarily closely associated, the American CSJS could not depend on subsidies or contracts from local officials to help finance their institutions. ¹³ Financial problems were constant for transplanted European communities that had to learn to survive without wealthy benefactors or royal grants. Spinning, sewing, raising food, and farm work were necessary to earn a livelihood in nineteenth-century America.¹⁴ The Carondelet sisters tried to “grub their field” for food, “but they were not strong enough,” so they employed a hired man for the field and created their own industry by making “sacs for powder,” selling them for a penny apiece. The school enrollment was small, and the meager accommodations, primitive conditions, and knee-deep mud after a rain limited the numbers of children who could attend. Boarders brushed snow from their bedding, and an umbrella protected the cook stove from rain and snow during the first winter. Students were encouraged to bring their own supplies or bring firewood in lieu of tuition.¹⁵

In the spring of 1837 the early CSJS were reminded of the perilous environment of their new country. Mother Febronie Fontbonne,¹⁶ who was superior of the Cahokia community, was returning to Cahokia after spending some time with her biological sister, Sister Delphine, at Carondelet. After disembarking on the Illinois side of the river, Mother Febronie missed the path through the woods to the convent. When she did not return, the sisters alerted the villagers of Cahokia. Groups of men gathered with torches and hunting horns in the center of the village:

As middle-class, educated French women, thousands of miles from home, the sisters and their religious community were challenged daily by harsh conditions, an unfamiliar climate, poverty, and isolation. It was a welcome relief when, in 1837, they received two long-awaited reinforcements from Lyons. The new arrivals, Sisters Celestine Pommerel and St. John Fournier, had been chosen to be members of the original group to come to the United States but had remained in France an extra year to learn sign language.¹⁸ With two trained teachers, the community could now open its school for the deaf, which would provide the Carondelet sisters with additional income. Their numbers were bolstered even more with the entry of the first American-born postulant, Anne Eliza Dillon. In spite of the growing numbers and newfound financial resources, however, the CSJS’ fragile successes were threatened by other foes: interfering male clerics, nepotism, sibling rivalry, and French autocratic tendencies.

The first such threat came from a rivalry between two parish priests. Assigned as the America-bound CSJS’ “spiritual father” before they left France, Father Jacques Fontbonne had accompanied his two biological sisters (Sister Febronie and Sister Delphine) and the CSJ contingent to St. Louis. As a Cathedral parish priest, he visited the CSJS often, particularly at Carondelet, where his sister Delphine was superior. This upset the local parish priest, Edmund Saulnier, who felt Father Fontbonne was infringing on his own rights as the “spiritual director” of the Carondelet community. Although Saulnier had a reputation for being “eccentric” and prone to alcohol problems, he probably faced a genuine rival in the younger Fontbonne. ¹⁹ Frustrated with what he perceived as Fontbonne’s usurping of his duties, Saulnier wrote a series of letters to Bishop Joseph Rosati in 1837 and 1838, commenting on the CSJS’ internal affairs and his dislike of Father Fontbonne. In October 1837 he wrote that “[Fontbonne] comes almost continuously to Carondelet; he is certainly above reproach, but this offends the Sisters at [Cahokia] that he is fonder of his sister Delphine.”²⁰

Father Saulnier also expressed concerns about what he perceived as the nuns’ lack of respect for his authority. Apparently rebuffed by the CSJS when he requested that they sing at mass, he wrote the bishop that he only wanted “to express my opinion” to help the sisters reinterpret their constitution, which would have allowed them to sing at mass. When the sisters continued to refuse him, Saulnier wanted the bishop to intervene and require the sisters to “sing for parish mass when I need them.” He also mentioned that other communities of sisters had “never complained about my management.” Frustrated with the CSJS’ lack of submission, in one scathing letter to Bishop Rosati he threatened to refuse to have any dealings with the sisters in Carondelet.²¹ Although no written documents remain to explain the situation from the CSJ perspective, the priest’s letters suggest that the sisters had power struggles with Father Saulnier over his persistent demands and interference in their internal affairs, especially his insistence on interpreting their constitution in a way that would force them to acquiesce to his wishes.

Father Fontbonne had his own power struggles with the sisters, particularly in Cahokia, where his sister Febronie and her two companions were missioned. Whether Febronie was indeed offended by his attention to the younger Delphine at Carondelet is impossible to determine, but Febronie’s companions at Cahokia refused to obey Father Fontbonne, ignoring his orders and going over his head to the bishop’s assistant. Furious and utterly frustrated, Father Fontbonne wrote to Bishop Rosati that the sisters at Cahokia “refused to obey my younger sister Delphine [whom he had temporarily made superior in Cahokia].... I must not have anything further to do with the Sisters of Cahokia, and I leave everything in the hands of your Greatness.”²² The sisters clearly understood how and who to resist. The gendered and hierarchical nature of the power dynamics and the sisters’ French constitution made Bishop Rosati the ultimate authority to resolve any disputes, giving the nuns some leeway to resist unwanted demands from lesser male clerics.

The CSJS also had power struggles among themselves amid the strains of poverty, physical deprivations, and Americanization. Before the sisters left France their superior in Lyons, Mother St. John Fontbonne, had appointed one of her nieces, Febronie Fontbonne, to the position of superior. When the group divided to staff two mission sites, Febronie was located in Cahokia, and Bishop Rosati appointed the other niece, Delphine, as superior of the Carondelet group.²³ Young and full of fervor, Mother Delphine gained a reputation as an autocrat and rigid taskmaster, zealous to follow the French Rule exactly even in the primitive conditions of the early community and in a setting that demanded greater flexibility.

Sister Mary Joseph Dillon, the young American novice, distressed over what she saw as the tyrannical attitude of her superior, responded in a very assertive way to the situation, petitioning Bishop Rosati for relief. Only seventeen years old, Dillon was well educated, spoke fluent French and English, and came from a wealthy family in St. Louis. Her presence as the first American-born postulant and as the only fluent speaker of English made her a valuable resource for the struggling community, particularly in Carondelet, where the ability to speak and teach English was necessary for survival. Chafing under the rigid French regime of Mother Delphine, she wrote Bishop Rosati in March of 1838, “The Superior requires me to do work, for which I have not strength sufficient. My health is not very good and at times I have severe pains in my breast and side. Mother is forever scolding me, she says as a novice I ought to be employed in the kitchen and that it is an honor for me to teach.”²⁴ In France, a young novice would probably not be teaching and would be expected to perform most of the domestic and manual labor in the community.

Sister Mary Joseph Dillon was not the only novice to resist Mother Delphine’s regime. Sister St. John Fournier, who had arrived in 1837 from Lyons to teach the deaf with Sister Celestine Pommerel, wrote to Rosati describing the continuing conflict. She told the bishop that Mother Delphine was upset because “it is the sentiment of all the sisters” that they do not “trust” her but trust Sister Celestine instead. Fournier appealed for the removal of Mother Delphine and warned that if the bishop did not act “very soon[,] all religious spirit will be gone from this house.” In a later letter she lamented, “I am so often threatened with being thrown out of the door that at any time I expect it.”²⁵

This type of assertiveness by the sisters, especially young novices, was unusual, but it proved to be critical to the community’s survival.²⁶ Even Father Saulnier agreed that Mother Delphine needed to be removed, stating in a letter to Bishop Rosati that Mother Delphine’s methods were excessive. He wrote that she treated the sisters “like slaves or Negro women” and “though she is a good nun and strictly observant, requires from the sisters more than God himself requires from his creatures.”²⁷ By 1839 Bishop Rosati had heard enough from both mission sites. He limited unwanted clerical interference by reassigning Fathers Saulnier and Fontbonne and appointed Celestine Pommerel as superior at Carondelet, sending Sister Delphine to Cahokia.²⁸ Novices Dillon and Fournier and the other sisters had successfully challenged gender and hierarchical privilege to force the bishop’s hand, first in active resistance to interfering clerics and second in demanding a more moderate, less autocratic superior. After a tumultuous three years the appointment of Mother Celestine Pommerel stabilized the faltering American foundation, and for almost two decades she led the CSJS toward stability, expansion, and autonomy in their new home.

Celestine Pommerel was twenty-six years old when she assumed the leadership of the CSJ foundation at Carondelet. Born in 1813 in Feillan, France, Pommerel was the oldest of four children of a wealthy and highly devout family who provided her with cultural and educational opportunities. She received the habit of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Lyons at eighteen, and four years later she volunteered to receive special training in sign language and to join the mission to the United States. As superior of the American CSJS, she inherited a small and struggling community of eight professed sisters and three novices who were attempting to staff schools at two mission sites in Cahokia and Carondelet.²⁹ Respected if not idolized by her peers and students, she possessed shrewdness and foresight that not only calmed the strife within the community but also created financial stability and fostered growth in personnel, institutions, and influence.

Early in 1839 the CSJS received monies from two unexpected sources—local and state government. St. Joseph’s Institute for the Deaf, created by Mother Celestine Pommerel and Sister St. John Fournier, was gaining students and a statewide reputation. Leaders in Missouri wanted to establish a school for the deaf, but legislators could not agree on funding and location. Using his political connections, Bishop Rosati suggested that the sisters contract for state monies for deaf education until the legislature could build and fund a state institution. In February of 1839 the state legislature agreed and later that year began sending the sisters annual stipends to board and teach Missouri children at the school for the deaf.³⁰ In April, the local village of Carondelet, which had no public school, agreed to pay the CSJS “to educate in the ordinary branches of English and French languages the female children of the town of Carondelet, from six to eighteen years old.” To alleviate hostility and out of kindness, the CSJS had wisely never turned away children from the school for lack of tuition and thus made friends, both Protestant and Catholic, in local government.³¹ With some financial stability assured, Mother Celestine then began her own projects to add further financial security to the American foundation.

A large contribution from a female benefactor, Mrs. John Mullanphy, allowed Mother Celestine to begin renovation of the convent/school to provide additional space for boarders and for a “select” school or academy. ³² Wisely promoting a “French” education to aspiring American parents, St. Joseph’s Academy, or “Madame Celestine’s School,” as it was popularly called, attracted wealthy local girls and “daughters of Southern planters.” Eliza McKenney Brouillet, the daughter of a Virginian, recalled that her mother sent her to St. Joseph’s Academy to acquire “a French education in all the purity of the language.”³³ By spring 1841 a new three-story brick building welcomed seven boarders, and by the mid-1840s, two additional wings had been added.

Boarding students, day students, deaf students, and orphans all interacted closely with the sisters in the 1840s, and their activities and experiences often intertwined in the multipurpose convent setting that housed an academy, orphanage, school for the deaf, parish school, and living accommodations for the sisters themselves. In 1840 the sisters taught and cared for twelve boarders, seventy day pupils, four orphans, and nine deaf children. By the end of the decade, fifty boarders, eighty day pupils and twenty-eight orphans and deaf students filled the premises.³⁴ As one of the first students at St. Joseph’s Academy, Eliza McKenney (Brouillet), spent six years with the sisters, and her memoirs provide interesting insights about everyday life in the convent and the physical and emotional strains of the early years of the CSJ foundation.³⁵

Coming to the academy at age nine, Eliza was boarded in Mother Celestine’s room until dormitory space became available. This allowed her to observe the strains of leadership and responsibility experienced by the young superior. Brouillet wrote, “In many of [my] informal visits [to Mother Celestine] I found her in tears.” Carrying the survival and future of the American community on her shoulders, Celestine Pommerel must have been burdened immensely indeed.

Brouillet also wrote of the harsh physical conditions the sisters and children endured. In winter, the “cold winds had a high carnival in our dormitory, particularly during snow storms,” when the nuns would have to come in the middle of the night to wake the children and shake the snow from their beds. And on winter mornings “sometimes we would have to wait until we got downstairs to bathe our faces as the water in the pails would be one solid cake of ice.”

According to Brouillet, the nuns were affectionate with the children and provided encouragement, hugs and kisses, and doting attention, particularly if the youngsters became ill. Because of the lack of space, and probably as a result of homesickness on the part of both sisters and children, during the early years the boarders often took recreation with the sisters, worked alongside them making “sacs for powder” to provide extra income, and visited the poor and infirm with the sisters.

This “relaxed” convent atmosphere was probably unique to the early years as the small CSJ community struggled to survive physically, emotionally, and financially. Tragedy and death were never far away. Young Eliza witnessed the death and funeral of Sister Mary Joseph Dillon and of one of the children, the five-year-old daughter of the “hired man” who had become the “pet” of the sisters and older students. The little girl was so taken with the sisters that she begged to wear a habit so she could be “a little Sister of St. Joseph.” The CSJS acquiesced, and a miniature habit was sewn to fit the child. At her untimely death two years later, her grieving father begged that his daughter be buried in her “habit”; the nuns agreed, placing her coffin in the sisters’ chapel and burying the child in her “religious garb.”

The early academy provided emotional sustenance and purpose for the CSJS, but it also provided much needed financial support, particularly through the academy tuition. This select school supplied a moderate but steady income that helped pay the bills for the religious community and eventually helped finance other institutional work that was less lucrative. Although the CSJS and other women’s communities staffed parish schools and boarded orphans, rarely were the sisters paid regularly or more than subsistence wages. The degree of success of early academies often determined whether American sisters and their communities could survive financially.³⁶

Even with some financial stability provided by academy tuition, recruiting new American novices was critical to the CSJS’ success. No European-based religious community could survive in the United States unless it recruited American women. Religious foundations of purely American origin were typically more successful in attracting American postulants because they were more willing to ignore or modify some European customs, particularly those pertaining to class differentiation.³⁷ By the mid- 1840s and after the death of Mother St. John Fontbonne in France, the new French superior decided that no more sisters would be sent from the Lyons motherhouse to the United States. The French sisters were needed in their own country, and it was decided that “young American girls [were] better adapted physically to the severe climate, and better prepared by their knowledge of the language and customs of the country to take up the work of education.”³⁸ Understanding that there would be no more recruits from France in the near future or possibly ever, Mother Celestine and the CSJS made great strides in increasing their total numbers and recruiting American women. In response to new American recruits and to encourage more English-speaking novices, Mother Celestine had the CSJ French constitution translated into English in 1847. By 1850 the community had forty-four members, 36 percent of whom were American-born.

In the 1850s the community continued to grow; twelve more American-born women joined the community, as did ninety-two of European origin, primarily German and Irish. Additionally, to help meet demands for their services, the CSJS requested and received a large influx of sisters from the CSJ convent in Moutiers, France. The American-born contingent was still a minority, but it is important to note that most of the foreign-born recruits (80 percent of those who entered in the 1850s) resided in the United States before entering the CSJ community. Already the CSJS’ ethnic diversity reflected the midcentury profile of the larger American Catholic population. This “French” religious community now included a sizable contingent born in America in addition to a large number from Ireland and Germany who immigrated prior to the Civil War, probably as children or adolescents, and who, technically, were first-generation Americans.³⁹ Mother Celestine’s wise decision, made a decade earlier, to translate the constitution into English helped solidify the ethnically diverse community of the 1850s. By encouraging English as the language shared by all, regardless of birthplace, the Sisters of St. Joseph made their community more attractive to American girls and provided a common linguistic identity for training future sisters, particularly for teaching positions.

As the CSJ numbers grew in the 1840s and 1850s so did their outreach in St. Louis. The Carondelet convent and school housed a combination of boarders, day students, and orphans, and in 1845 the CSJS began teaching in an ethnically diverse parish school, St. Vincent de Paul, composed of German immigrants, English-speaking students, and, later, Irish-immigrant children. In 1845 the CSJS opened a school for “colored” children in downtown St. Louis, an outreach project that caused a flare-up of anti-Catholic and racist sentiment. Children of free blacks were taught a general elementary curriculum, along with French and ornamental needlework. After school hours and on Sundays, the children of slaves were prepared to receive the sacraments.⁴⁰ The school appeared to be welcomed by the black population as 100 children (mostly girls) attended. One of the pupils wrote, “We felt at home and were happy, because the time and attention of the Sisters was all our own, and there was no one to tease us.”⁴¹ This cross-cultural experience was short-lived, however. Within a year the sisters began to receive almost daily threatening demands to close the school. The director of the school, Sister St. John Fournier, wrote,

In 1846 the CSJS opened their first freestanding orphan home when they took over St. Joseph’s Home for Boys. This was a significant decision on the part of Mother Celestine because it moved the American community beyond teaching into a second arena of service so vital to nineteenth-century American Catholic culture: the care of male and female orphans. Teaching boys and caring for male orphans made the CSJS especially popular with American bishops and local secular authorities because the need was great and some religious orders of women were forbidden by their European constitutions to work with male children.⁴³

Buoyed by the growth and success of the CSJ community, Mother Celestine made a bold move to expand the CSJ sphere of influence beyond the diocese of St. Louis by accepting the invitation to send CSJS to Philadelphia to administer an orphan home for boys. This expansion to Philadelphia in 1847 was also significant because two years later the CSJS opened their first American hospital there.⁴⁴ Unlike some Catholic sisterhoods who concentrated on only one type of activity, the American CSJS, like their French counterparts, were willing to diversify; by 1849 they were involved in three main areas of service—teaching, nursing, and social welfare. With the increase in membership during the 1850s, the CSJS continued to move into other parts of the country, opening academies, teaching in parish schools, and administering and staffing hospitals and orphanages. Expansion continued north to Minnesota and Canada (1851), east to (West) Virginia (1853), northeast to upstate New York (1854), and south to Mississippi (1855).

By the late 1850s, the CSJ community had planted strong roots in most regions of the United States as the community grew in membership, ethnic diversity, and services provided. Mother Celestine Pommerel had fostered successful adaptation to America by creating new financial opportunities, encouraging ethnically diverse as well as English-speaking novices, and satisfying local and state secular authorities by providing needed services for poor or handicapped children, orphans, and the sick, regardless of religious affiliation. Because of the limited opportunities for communication and travel between the American nuns and their French motherhouse, Mother Celestine also began making plans for a central governance structure for the American community, separate from France, with regional provinces that would function independently but with some direction from the motherhouse in Carondelet (St. Louis). She died in 1857 before she could make this plan a reality, but her leadership had laid the necessary foundation. The eighteen years of her administration had transformed the CSJS from a small, struggling group of eleven sisters to a community of approximately 150 nuns working throughout the United States and Canada in numerous schools, hospitals, and social welfare institutions.⁴⁵

Mother Celestine’s death was a tremendous blow to the young CSJ community, particularly at a time when restructuring was necessary and a separate American foundation was being established. Her charismatic personality and sound judgment had pulled the community through rough times for almost two decades, unifying an ethnically diverse group of women around common goals. When representatives of the CSJ community assembled in St. Louis to elect her successor they chose American-born Seraphine Coughlin, a highly respected member of the community for eleven years who was currently the superior in St. Paul, Minnesota. Feeling ill and overwhelmed by the thought of the new task, Coughlin declined the position. Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick called the sisters together in St. Louis to announce her refusal, deciding to make the appointment himself, which was his right under their existing French constitution. ⁴⁶ He chose Sister St. John Facemaz, who had come to America only three years earlier from Moutiers, France. She had served as a counselor to Mother Celestine and also as mistress of novices at the motherhouse. When Archbishop Kenrick announced his unilateral decision in the chapel at Carondelet he received a stunning and totally unexpected reaction. Sister Febronie Boyer, who was present at the scene, described the sisters’ response: “This announcement caused great excitement. The sisters screamed—threw themselves on the floor, etc. The Archbishop left immediately, even ran from the chapel and would not hear or see anyone.”⁴⁷ What would cause a well-disciplined group of nuns to react with such an uncharacteristically emotional display that frightened even the archbishop? Unfortunately the sisters did not record the specific reasons for their displeasure, but the known facts provide some plausible theories.

Whoever was chosen to succeed the admired Mother Celestine would have had a difficult task, but St. John Facemaz was probably in a more tenuous situation than most. She had been in the United States for only three years and had not had an opportunity to build friendships with sisters who had spent years of their life developing the American community and personal associations with each other. More importantly, however, Facemaz personified, figuratively if not literally, the more rigid, French regime that Mother Celestine had been able to moderate. The 1857 CSJ community was not the 1836 “French” congregation of its origin. It had become an eclectic band of German, French, Irish, and American-born sisters, many of whom had resided in the United States and spoken English before entering the community. When given the opportunity, they had elected an American-born sister to lead them. When she unexpectedly declined, Archbishop Kenrick had taken matters into his own hands, unaware of the ethnic politics inherent in his decision. Sister Febronie Boyer wrote that “many of the sisters were so dissatisfied that they went to other houses and some gave up their [work].... [O]thers who were not in favor of Mother St. John stayed.”⁴⁸ Kenrick’s decision and its aftermath created internal strife in the community that took years to resolve.

Mother St. John Facemaz was an extremely capable woman who had been a member of Mother Celestine’s inner circle, particularly during the last year of Celestine’s illness. Facemaz had come to the United States in 1854, after failing to obtain an earlier foreign assignment to India. As mistress of novices, she gained a reputation as stern taskmaster and “in the exercise of her authority, she countenanced no half measures.”⁴⁹ This reputation and her recent French immigration probably provoked the sisters’ fears about the direction and future of a community that they had begun to think of as American.

Although Mother St. John’s immediate task was to continue the preparations for general governance begun under Mother Celestine, a tragic event made her life and work even more difficult. Seven months after her appointment, a fire destroyed almost all of the Carondelet convent and school. Ill and bedridden at the time, she had been carried out a secondfloor window to safety. This devastating blow placed the CSJS once again in financial peril, and Mother St. John had to direct the plans for general government and obtain funds for a major rebuilding project simultaneously.⁵⁰

Archbishop Kenrick played a major role in encouraging and helping to plan the reorganization of the American CSJS. In a major move toward Americanization before her death, Mother Celestine had worked with Kenrick to secure “mutual agreement” with Lyons for a separate American congregation.⁵¹ She had planned to personally visit each CSJ house in the United States to discuss the plans for general government, talking with sisters and bishops in each of the dioceses where CSJS worked. Because of her illness, the visits were never made, and after her death, Mother St. John Facemaz had her hands full trying to calm discontented sisters and deal with the aftermath of the devastating fire. In 1860 Kenrick and Mother St. John were finally ready to proceed with reorganization and establishing a centralized government.

The issues involved were complex and had to do with Americanization, lines of authority, and gender politics. The CSJS’ official separation from France necessitated defining new lines of authority in America. The goal was to restructure the congregation and apply for “papal approbation” (i.e., Vatican approval) of the new American constitution. Under the sisters’ current French constitution, each bishop, as the supreme authority in his diocese, had the right to impose corrections, confirm elections, appoint or remove the sister superior, and control daily activities of the CSJS under his jurisdiction. The new American constitution proposed the election of a female superior general who would reside at the motherhouse in St. Louis. Similar to a contemporary CEO, she would have authority over all CSJ houses, wherever they were located, and would serve as the official leader of the community throughout the United States. Provincial houses would be created in regions of the country where the CSJS had large concentrations of sisters (north and east). The houses would be tied to St. Louis and the motherhouse under the umbrella of general government, but each province would have authority to train its own novices and operate its own institutions. St. Louis would function both as a provincial house for CSJS in the Midwest and South and as the motherhouse for general government.

In reality, after 1847, when Mother Celestine had sent sisters from St. Louis to Philadelphia, she had been functioning in this de facto role as superior general without possessing constitutional authority. The new constitution would legalize this centralized authority. Naturally, some bishops who had CSJ houses in their diocese fought the centralization movement. They feared not only losing power to a female superior general but, more importantly, losing ecclesiastical power to another male—the archbishop of St. Louis. The location of the motherhouse in St. Louis would make Archbishop Kenrick the immediate ecclesiastical authority for the leadership of the entire CSJ community if it came under general government, and might thus indirectly give him considerable although unspecified influence over houses in the dioceses of other bishops.⁵² To gain further autonomy and stability for the community, once the general government was established, Mother St. John planned to present the new constitution to Rome for papal approval. If granted “papal approbation” the CSJS would come under direct Vatican authority, further limiting the control of local bishops. According to Margaret Susan Thompson, the sisters’ fear of male interference was not unfounded as “virtually everything sisters did could be affected by the interference of clerics—clerics whose collective mindset was both patriarchal and European.”⁵³

Amid this gendered web of hierarchy and power, both sisters and bishops struggled with whether to accept this new authority structure. When in April 1860 Archbishop Kenrick and Mother St. John called a meeting of sister delegates from all the dioceses to St. Louis to discuss Bishop Kenrick’s proposals and vote on general government as outlined in their new American constitution, battle lines had been drawn. Sisters from St. Louis, St. Paul, Toronto, Hamilton (Canada), Wheeling, Natchez, and Albany dioceses attended; but sisters from Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Brooklyn did not send representatives because their bishops, adamantly opposed to general government, wanted their local CSJS to become diocesan communities completely under their jurisdiction, forever separate from the motherhouse in St. Louis.⁵⁴ Male clerics’ resistance reflected opposition to what they understood to be a loss of power. Not only did they not want the archbishop of St. Louis to have any authority over them, they strongly resisted a female superior general who would have anything to say about sisters or institutions in their dioceses.

For the sisters the problem was double-edged. Who did they want controlling their communities? Did they want to report to a female superior general in St. Louis (problematic for some), or did they want to be subjected to a male bishop closer to home in their own diocese who, for better or worse, would have complete authority over their local community? General government and papal approbation offered the sisters affirmation of the unity and stability within their young American community—a coming of age of sorts. Most of the sisters had strong ties to each other, the CSJ community, and the motherhouse in St. Louis. On the other hand, local bishops offered them an opportunity to stay in the diocese where they had developed institutions, networks, and local ties. There was a perception that local bishops could provide a new “independent” setting that might have appeared more “American” than the one currently administered by the French-born Mother St. John Facemaz. Writing a few years later, Facemaz described the attraction of “independence” for some sisters, claiming that some CSJS were “seduced by the attraction of a false liberty.”⁵⁵

When in the spring of 1860 Bishop Kenrick presented his plan for general government (his “memorandum”) to the assembled sisters, he asked for feedback. Based on the sisters’ recommendations, he revised the memorandum, incorporating their suggestions on voting, the election of the superior general, and appointment of provincial superiors. After voting to accept the new revised constitution and general government, the sisters elected Mother St. John as the first superior general. In time, more local bishops withdrew their support for the new constitution, and ultimately, St. Louis, Troy, New York, and St. Paul, Minnesota, remained to serve as sites for the motherhouse, Eastern province, and Northern province, respectively. The Carondelet CSJS had lost all institutions and houses in the Philadelphia, Buffalo, Brooklyn, Wheeling, and Canadian dioceses. Iron-handed bishops from these areas told CSJS who favored general government to return to St. Louis because from now on these CSJ communities would be diocesan, severed permanently from the motherhouse and placed under their direct control. CSJ houses were ripped apart as some sisters packed their bags, left their friends, and returned to St. Louis, relinquishing the ties established through years of work and sacrifice in the schools, hospitals, and orphanages they had helped to build. Regional loyalties often influenced sisters’ decisions. The Wheeling community was typical: three Virginians and one Marylander chose to stay, while three “nonlocal” sisters chose to return to St. Louis. Those left behind also felt the pain of separation, but some were angry at the Carondelet motherhouse in St. Louis for forcing the issue. In Wheeling, where the number of sisters was cut in half, one nun lamented, “All that had been done before was undone by the action of the Carondelet House.”⁵⁶

The loss of the Philadelphia CSJS had to be the most painful. Mother St. John Fournier, one of the eight original sisters who came to America, was superior of this first CSJ mission outside of the St. Louis area. Between 1847 and 1860 the Philadelphia CSJS had thrived under Fournier’s leadership, eventually administering and/or staffing ten educational, health care, and social welfare institutions. The decision to remain in Philadelphia must have been very difficult for her. Probably feeling the weight of responsibilities as superior and mourning the loss of her close friend Mother Celestine, Fournier chose to remain in Philadelphia, forsaking the Carondelet community she had helped establish twenty-three years earlier.⁵⁷

It is interesting to speculate what the outcome might have been had Mother Celestine lived to fulfill her plan of visiting all the houses and politicking with sisters and bishops for the change. Also, had her replacement been a more popular choice with the sisters and less of a perceived threat to Americanization, the local bishops’ offers of “independence” might have appeared less appealing to sisters caught between loyalty to the motherhouse and regional ties. Ultimately, though, the bishops had the upper hand; gender and hierarchical privilege gave them unquestioned power within the church, particularly in their own dioceses. Even if all the CSJS in a diocese had refused to be part of a diocesan community, the bishop had the authority to send them all packing, forcing them to leave the institutions they had spent years building.

Not all sisters were passive subjects of bishops, however. In the St. Paul province, for example, one sister, through sheer determination, apparently influenced the bishop’s decision. In her memoirs of the St. Paul community, Sister Ignatius Cox wrote that Bishop Thomas Grace was against general government, which “caused a great amount of misunderstanding in the community here and came very near severing our relations with the Mother House to which we were all very much attached.” Cox gave Mother Seraphine Coughlin credit for convincing Bishop Grace to accept general government. “Our dear Mother Seraphine was wise.... [A]s she felt her strength failing she could not endure the thought of leaving her community separated from the Mother House which had been the home of herself and nearly all the sisters then in St. Paul. She pleaded so anxiously and so earnestly with the bishop that in deference to her wishes he withdrew his opposition.”⁵⁸ Unfortunately, this was the exception rather than the rule; many of the CSJ communities became diocesan, severing ties with the motherhouse in St. Louis. For the next decade some CSJ communities remained unsettled as individual sisters moved about from Carondelet to a diocesan community and back again. Some became founders of new CSJ diocesan communities in other American cities.⁵⁹

Some sisters never got over the pain of the separation and years later understood the ramifications of this “forced” choice. In the early twentieth century one Toronto CSJ wrote, “I re-echo with my whole heart and soul your ardent exclamation—If only there had been union from the beginning what a grand whole we would make! The strongest body of female Religious, I should say, in America. Alas! That St. Louis did not retain its hold on Philadelphia and the latter in turn keep Toronto and we in turn our daughter colonies. Perhaps in God’s good time the mistakes may be remedied, even though you and I do not live to see it.”⁶⁰

The CSJS were not alone in this dilemma, nor was their battle with male hierarchy unusual. This divide-and-conquer tactic occurred again and again in dioceses throughout the United States. That is why papal approbation was so important to the CSJS and other women’s congregations. It was their only defense against local bishops who felt the need to control and constantly interfere in the internal affairs of women religious. Papal approbation also made it possible for geographically separated communities to remain connected to the motherhouse and the original foundation. Additionally, many Catholic sisterhoods felt that submission to male authority in Rome, thousands of miles away, was far preferable to subjugation to a local bishop who could closely monitor and control every aspect of community life.⁶¹

Armed with a new American constitution and with some of her community still intact, Mother St. John Facemaz headed to Rome to secure papal approbation for the new CSJ constitution. After stopping in France in the spring of 1861 to solicit financial support for the rebuilding of the burned convent, she eventually reached Rome and presented the English translation of the CSJ constitution to a cardinal of the Roman Curia (papal government). However, he refused to accept it for examination, demanding that it be translated into French, Italian, or Latin. Staying up all night to translate into French the sections most important for approval, she presented it again to the cardinal. A Vatican committee deliberated and decided the entire document should be translated before they would even consider the new constitution.⁶² Mother St. John completed this task, and in 1863 the sisters received a “Decree of Commendation,” which was positive but provisional, requiring a trial period during which the sisters were to continue operating under general government for several years. More letters of support from local bishops, besides Archbishop Kenrick in St. Louis, were also required in support of the new constitution. Throughout the 1860s, bishops who had CSJS working in their dioceses sent a flurry of letters to Rome.⁶³ Clearly, had the American bishops not supported this effort the CSJS would have had no chance for success with the patriarchal and hierarchical Vatican.

In 1867 an undaunted Mother St. John traveled again to Rome to “remind” the Vatican of the community’s request for papal approbation. On this trip she traveled with Sister Julia Littenecker, who, if one were traveling to Rome to convince European clerics to approve a constitution, would be the companion of choice. Born in Germany and educated by the Benedictines, she entered the CSJ community in St. Louis in 1853 at the age of seventeen. A Latin and English scholar, Sister Julia Littenecker spoke six languages, authored devotional books, and was an accomplished musician who was considered an authority on church music and hagiology. She corresponded extensively with members of religious orders in Europe and America and missionaries in China and Palestine—a true woman of the world.⁶⁴ With Sister Julia by her side, Mother St. John was ready for anything. The pair exemplified the heterogeneous ethnic mix of Catholicism in nineteenth-century America: a French-born superior appointed by an Irish-born bishop, traveling with a German-born sister to take their American constitution to gain approval from an Italian pope. Their efforts were rewarded with “temporary” approbation, which became final papal approbation ten years later.⁶⁵

In the midst of the internal battles over the new American constitution and general government, the CSJS found themselves spectators and participants in a larger struggle—the American Civil War. When Mother St. John Facemaz returned from her first visit to Rome in 1861, she found St. Louis under martial law. Fearing for the CSJS in the Deep South, she recalled the sisters from Sulphur Springs, Mississippi. The Mississippi academy had lost most of its students when anxious parents requested their children’s return before the outbreak of hostilities in the area. Having expected to expand missions in the South, the CSJS reluctantly left their Mississippi convent/school and attempted to return to St. Louis. Union army blockades made train travel in the South difficult, so the sisters had to travel to Louisville, Kentucky, to make railroad connections back to St. Louis. Because of anti-Catholic sentiment, travel to and from Mississippi had never been pleasant, but the nuns found their return trip less frightening than their initial one, during which they were verbally harassed and spit upon. Arriving in Louisville amid hundreds of Union troops, Sister Mary Louis Lynch recalled, “We were looked upon and treated as spies. When we arrived at the dividing line, soldiers in uniform came hurriedly into the car, opened our trunks and baggage, and even examined our lunch basket. They took a sealed letter which Sister [Emerentia Bonnefoy] had written to her home, opened it and examined it carefully.” The letter, which was written in French, was passed from soldiers to officers and finally returned undeciphered much to the sisters’ private amusement.⁶⁶

In St. Louis and at their boarding school, St. Joseph’s Academy, the CSJS needed to maintain neutrality in a divided city. Because of its location in a border state, the academy’s student population included both northern and southern sympathizers. Sister Winifred Sullivan, Irish-born but a convert to Catholicism while growing up in Ohio, understood the need for neutrality and tact. As superior at the academy in 1863 she played a diplomat’s role, allowing students to demonstrate loyalties on both sides of the issue. In a city occupied by Union troops, the red, white, and blue academy uniforms provided ample cover for private dissenters.⁶⁷

Most scholars argue strongly that the actions of women religious during the Civil War did much to alleviate anti-Catholic sentiments. The war, a four-year struggle with which they could identify and in which they could participate, gave the sisters an opportunity to “feel” and “act” American. Both CSJS and students from the academy in St. Louis provided needlework and sewing for various aid societies that cared for the wounded, and the sisters provided food to poor families whose husbands or fathers were serving in the military. “The number of these families amounted at times to forty who daily received assistance at the convent.”⁶⁸

Nursing provided nuns with a visible public activity that broke down stereotypes and earned Protestant admiration both north and south. Since CSJS and other women religious had been operating hospitals prior to 1861, some scholars argue that nuns were the only experienced nurses before the war began.⁶⁹ One in five Civil War nurses were nuns, and similar to many other religious orders of women, the CSJS in Philadelphia and Wheeling provided care for soldiers during the war. Protestant prejudice remained strong, and many soldiers who had never seen a nun reacted initially with hostility, fear, and sometimes violence against the sisters. As the war progressed this negative attitude abated, particularly among wounded men and army doctors who worked with the sisters.⁷⁰ Wartime activities gained public recognition and commendations for many women religious. Mother de Chantal Keating of the CSJ community in Wheeling received a “bronze medal” from the Grand Army of the Republic in honor of her work as an army nurse. Ever the American and patriot, the Irish-born sister wore her war medal on her habit each Memorial Day until the day she died.⁷¹ The war seemed to solidify the CSJS’ American identity, which was reinforced through their continued recruitment of American-born sisters and ongoing rapid expansion, in spite of the loss of the diocesan communities.

Although French-born Mother St. John Facemaz was reelected as superior general in 1866, the community was changing swiftly. American-born Agatha Guthrie was elected assistant superior general, and of the 228 women who entered the community in the 1860s, 46 percent were American-born. With their ranks growing, CSJS continued to open missions in other parts of the country and other states, including Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, Arizona territory, and western Missouri, and in other regions in Minnesota and upstate New York.⁷²

By the time of the 1872 election for superior general, the success of the American community seemed assured. In an almost unanimous vote, the CSJS placed American-born Agatha Guthrie at the helm of a community in which half of its members had been born in the United States. The CSJS had an American constitution and an Americanized customs book that educated and prepared aspiring candidates for community life. In some ways, Mother Agatha Guthrie was the quintessential American superior general, epitomizing what the CSJS had become and symbolizing their future. And she had impressive American credentials: Born in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, in 1829, Minerva Guthrie came from a Protestant family whose roots dated back to eighteenth-century Boston, and her grandfather and great uncle fought at Bunker Hill. Enjoying “a well-sung Methodist hymn,” she had adopted the religion of her mother until she developed a close friendship with an Irish Catholic woman at a select school in St. Louis where they both were teaching. Baptized and converted to Catholicism, three years later and against her mother’s wishes she presented herself at the Carondelet convent clad in “a modish gown of pink.” Unabashed as she made her flashy entrance at the convent door, the twenty-one year old received the habit in 1850 and worked at missions in St. Louis, Wheeling, and Troy, New York. After general government was instituted she was appointed as the first provincial superior of the Troy (Eastern) province.⁷³

Besides her American credentials, extensive education, and broad experience, Guthrie’s personal qualities made her a favorite and effective leader. Known for her commanding presence but also for her sense of humor, she was a “good listener” who provided “clever sallies and a most enjoyable wit” sometimes at the expense of herself and other sisters. Some of Guthrie’s sayings have become community legend. She explained away any of her eccentricities by claiming, “It’s the Protestant in me.” When a young sister, unaware of Mother Agatha’s conversion, commented to her, “I think there is always something queer about converts, don’t you?,” Mother Agatha, without hesitating, deadpanned, “Yes, I do.”⁷⁴

Until her death in 1904, Mother Agatha Guthrie, with mostly American-born counselors at her side, offered stability and leadership that continued for thirty-two years. Her election guaranteed the ongoing American transformation of the CSJ community. After struggling for over three decades, the CSJS had come of age, surviving early turbulence and unrest and thriving in their American home. Armed with an American constitution and a general government that provided some autonomy and a partial buffer against clerical interference, they had relinquished their French identity by diversifying their community’s ethnicity and class even as they continued their French tradition of service in education, nursing, and social welfare, adapted to the American setting. Although their Catholicism still made them foreign to much of the Protestant majority, their adaptation and service-oriented activities had enabled them to carve a niche in American society and public life that reduced Protestant bigotry and supported the growing Catholic population. It was in this environment that young women entering the CSJ community would be educated and trained, molded to become a part of a larger collective identity and purpose, and primed to be shapers of Catholic culture and American life.