The Barber Conversion, Part II
Part II
In the cold New Year of 1823, an eager Virgil H. Barber - newly-ordained Father Barber – climbed into a stagecoach in Boston bound for the ten-to-twelve day trip to his hometown, Claremont, New Hampshire. (1) It seemed providential that he was returning to start the first Catholic church in New Hampshire.
Virgil was a former Episcopal minister who attracted international attention when he severed the bonds of his marriage and began studying for the Catholic priesthood. Arrangements were made for his wife and three oldest daughters to be placed in a convent. His two youngest children were placed with a bishop’s mother until they were old enough for boarding school.
It took him six and a half years, but his dream came true. Now it was time to build the kingdom of God, to bring the people of his hometown to the one, true church. (2) New England was still virulently anti-Catholic, and there wasn’t a single Catholic church in New Hampshire. But Virgil was starting in familiar territory, with people he knew. Just a few years before, he and Father Charles D. Ffrench, after conducting a week of masses at Virgil’s parents’ home, gained seven converts. They were members without a priest. Now, surely, he could grow a church from this little seed.
Fields Ready For Harvest
One reason Virgil may have been granted his wish to to serve in his hometown is that he could live with his parents, and the fledgling church could meet at their house. His father deeded some of his land to the Jesuits, and the plan was to build a church upon it. But another reason he sought permission to return there, as he stated in a letter to his Jesuit superior, was so that he could support his parents. (3) His father Daniel’s career as an Episcopal priest ended when he was ousted by the vestry of his church for supporting Catholicism. Daniel moved to Maryland where he spent three years studying and praying, living an itinerant life staying at the homes of wealthy church members and at a Jesuit retreat center in St. Inigoes. Virgil’s mother stayed behind in Claremont, supported by her son Truman, who ran a small family farm.
Now that he was back, Virgil conducted daily mass at the house with family members attending. On Sundays his aunt Nabby Barber Tyler attended with her family, as did another family of converts that were not relatives. Virgil began building a church and boys’ school with funds he collected in Canada, and from his trip from Alexandria, Virginia to Boston for his ordination. The cornerstone was laid in June 1823. He was able to scrape together a two-story building that was 20 by 40 feet, with two small classrooms on the first floor and a study hall on the second. It was attached as a new wing on Daniel’s house and named St. Mary’s - probably by the bishop. Virgil probably suggested St. Francis Xavier.
Opening the school was financially essential, but also Virgil had big dreams of educating a rising generation that would fill seminaries, spreading Catholicism. Virgil reported to his Jesuit superior that he immediately had more scholars than he could accommodate. His cousin William Tyler, age 15 and newly converted, was a student at the school, and supervised younger boys as a prefect. He had already announced his intention to study for the priesthood. (4)
At Claremont Catholic Academy the boys wore a uniform of a blue frock coat with yellow seams and a flowing red sash. They spoke nothing but Latin. Their schedule was as follows:
5:30 a.m. - Rise, wash, and arrive in the study room.
7:15 a.m. - Breakfast and recreation
8:30 a.m. - Classes
11:30 a.m. Dinner and recreation
1:30 p.m. Classes
4:30 p.m. Recreation
5:30 p.m. Study
7:00 p.m. Supper and recreation
9:00 p.m. Lights out
Tuition and boarding was only a dollar a week. Virgil purposely priced it as low as he possibly could to include the sons of poor farmers. His ultimate goal was developing a pipeline of desperately needed new priests.
In spite of any hostility toward Catholicism, Claremont parents sent their sons to the academy. There was nothing like it nearby. The local public school was basic, offering reading, writing and arithmetic. The academy was a college preparatory school, and in addition to Latin, Virgil taught Greek and French.(5) He was known for his excellence in teaching back in his days with the Episcopal Church, and he quickly earned the confidence of parents and respect for the school.
In December Virgil closed the school to go on another “begging trip” to Canada. He was gone until late February 1824, traveling in sub-zero temperatures, going from parish to parish, mostly addressing poor farmers. Yet the people gave and he returned satisfied. He reopened the school, resumed daily mass and made new converts. A member of his childhood church, Union Episcopal across the street, bought a new organ for St. Mary’s.(6)
In June Virgil’s father Daniel deeded his remaining property to the Society of Jesus, including his house, barn and orchard. However, he added a clause that his never-married son Truworth would have use of the house, barn, garden and woodshed for the remainder of his life.
In February 1825, Virgil’s mother Chloe died at age 79. She was the first in the family to convert, and the first buried in a new Catholic cemetery. It was a measure of comfort to Virgil that he could give his mother last rights and a Catholic burial. He was one of only three priests in all of New England, and without his presence in Claremont she would have died without both.
The Placements
Father Benedict Fenwick was Virgil’s champion in the church from their first meeting. He engineered everything to make it possible for Virgil to dispose of his wife and children and study for the priesthood. Now, Fenwick was named bishop of Boston; his diocese, all of New England. November 1825 Virgil traveled south to attend his mentor’s ordination ceremony in Baltimore.
He and Fenwick had some other business to conclude. It was Virgil’s plan and Fenwick’s hope that when the Barber girls reached the right age, they would join convents. Mary, Abbey, Susan and Josey knew no other life. The first three were six, seven and eight when they entered the Visitation Monastery’s Academy and boarding school; they had some memories of a normal family life in a home with their mother and father. Josephine was only 10 months old when she was separated from her mother. She was raised in the comfortable plantation house of Margaret Fenwick, the bishop’s widowed mother until she was old enough to start school. After that, Josephine’s school holidays were spent at Mrs. Fenwick’s, and poignantly, she said these were the happiest times in her childhood. Did Mrs. Fenwick ever give the older girls a break from the convent’s rigid schedule, austerity and solemnity?
Today we recognize how traumatic it is for children to be separated from their parents, how long-lasting the effects. Also today, the conditions at the Academy – food, clothing, shelter and emotional needs – would be considered horribly abusive and neglectful by modern standards. Did the girls really have a choice as to what was going to happen to them? No doubt they’d been told throughout childhood that their future was joining a religious order. Maybe they even felt they owed it to the Church, as they were charity cases at Visitation.
So taking advantage of the rare time when Bishop Fenwick, Virgil, and Jerusha could be together, they met to discuss the girls’ placements. Mary, Abbey, Susan and Josephine were brought in to see their parents (Samuel came too). After business was taken care of, Josephine described their parting as “tearful and sorrowful,” truly heart-wrenching.(7) They knew they would never be all together again.
Partings and Joinings
In April 1826 Mary and Abbey began their journey north. They must have had another anguished good-bye, this one with their mother. Bishop Fenwick wanted Mary at an Ursuline convent he started in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He thought the Canadian Ursuline convent at Three Rivers was best for Abbey. They all knew that joining these convents, they would never see their mother again.
The first leg of their journey they were chaperoned by a widow named Mrs. Jenkins. In later years she would join the Visitation monastery in Mobile, Alabama, and by coincidence serve as the infirmarian, who would care for Jerusha (Sister Mary Augustine) in her last days.
In August Mary “died to the world” and became a “bride of Christ” in a ceremony watched by many curious Protestants. She took the name Mary Benedict.
September 1826 Abbey took the veil at the Ursuline convent in Quebec, and became Sister Mary Francis Xavier.
August 1827 Josephine and Susan went north. Josey had been struggling with her health. She was only 11 years old and Mother St. George sent her to the family of Captain Bela Chase in New Hampshire to recover. The captain’s family were the first non-family converts Virgil had. Bela Chase’s sister joined the Visitandines and a daughter joined the Ursulines in Boston.
Josephine related another poignant story of a visit with her father just a few weeks into her stay with the Chases. “He had come on some business matter and staid two nights and day – the only two nights I had slept under the same roof with him from infancy.”
Josephine wanted to “profit from” going to confession, as she said, and several times left the room and knelt in prayer to prepare, but she could not bring herself to stay away from her father. He ended up leaving before she could confess to him. She told Mrs. Chase about her regrets; her host suggested she write to him as he was spending the next week at the family home in Claremont. Josey did so, and watched at the window each day until her father arrived in a coach with four horses. “As I saw them turning in the front gate, my heart beat with joy – my father got out…”
Virgil heard her confession and that of all the Chase family. After they were done, Josey went back to the parlor with her father, “who seemed more delighted than I was myself, took me up under the arms and jumped me several times halfway to the ceiling exclaiming: “My baby! My baby!” He always called me the baby because I was the youngest.” (8)
Once Josephine’s health was restored, she and Susan were sent to the Ursuline academy in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where Mary taught.
Nabby’s Children
Josephine and her sisters were not the only nuns in the family. Somehow, it wasn’t enough to convert to Catholicism. Going “all in” and joining religious orders was a hallmark of the Barber conversions. The Barber girls seemed to have no real choice. But the Tyler girls – that was a different story. Virgil's Aunt Nabby and her oldest daughter Rosetta were among his first converts. Eventually Nabby’s husband Noah and all eight of their children converted, though at different times. Five of the children gave themselves to the church. Their son William became a priest and all four daughters joined convents.
Rosetta was the first to take vows. In 1820, at age 22, she joined Elizabeth Ann Seton’s Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, and became Sister Genevieve.
Catherine Cecelia, called Cecelia, joined Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph in 1827. Cecelia was only 15 when she became Sister Mary James. She was sent to work in St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum in Washington D.C. and died there at age 19.
Martha entered the Sisters of Charity at the same time as Cecelia. Martha was 18 when she became Sister Mary Beatrice.
Finally, there was Sarah Maria. She also joined Mother Seton’s Sisters of Charity in 1827. She became Sister Mary DeSales.
All the Tyler girls were pioneering sisters, moving to areas of need in a growing country facing complex problems. Three of the four became Sister Servants - their order’s title for what was called Mother Superior in other orders. (9)
Unraveled
May 21, 1826 - “The Bishop sets out for Claremont, New Hampshire, in order to administer the holy sacrament of confirmation under the charge of Rev. V.H. Barber, whose church he had promised to visit at this time.”
So began an entry in Bishop Benedict Fenwick’s Memoranda.(10) Fenwick traveled from Boston by stagecoach. He recorded his arrival:
June 2nd - Arrives in Claremont after a tedious journey – the weather excessively warm.
On June 4th, Fenwick confirmed 21 new members of the Roman Catholic Church. Among them was Truworth Barber, and Calvin Tyler, Virgil’s cousin (Nabby’s son). Most of them left the Episcopal church right across the street to join St. Mary’s. At the confirmation, the tower-like brick structure Virgil built could not accommodate the crowd that wanted to watch this novelty. People hung out of windows and doors of the house next door, and lined the street and churchyard trying to catch a glimpse of the mass.
In early September, Daniel took his nephew William Tyler to Boston to meet with Bishop Fenwick. William was 16 and asked to be trained for the priesthood. Fenwick accepted him as a student.
Virgil wanted to do more in the construction of the church building but was cash-strapped, especially after Bishop Fenwick sent him on a tour of the Penobscot and Passmaquoddy Indians in Maine. This necessitated closing his school, which was almost his sole source of money. In May 1827 he looked forward to opening his school again and predicted greater success than ever in a letter to his Jesuit superior.(11)
Twenty-one conversions at one church in one small town is considered a success in just about any church today. The academy was successful, the church growing….a candidate to the priesthood was chosen…and then it all unraveled. Nineteenth century writers left frustratingly vague hints as to what went wrong. It involved Truworth and Daniel. One writer described Truworth as, “a rather hot-tempered individual, who was to bring tragedy in later years to the family.”(12)
Truworth, Laura, Daniel and Virgil became embroiled in disputes and anger towards each other. Daniel left Claremont abruptly to return to St. Inigoes, Maryland, without telling family and friends what his plans were. Truman and Laura said they were concerned that Daniel, at 71 was “partially deranged in mind.” They said they thought he might go to France seeking funds for the church, then would return to marry a woman he’d been seeing, keeping the funds for himself. (13) Virgil feared that Daniel would ask the Society of Jesus to return the deed to his property and begged his superior, Father Francis Dzierozynski, not to do so. “I shudder with horror when I think of his malice against me, which I have learned since his departure,” he wrote.
He also asked the Jesuit leader not to show Daniel any of his letters. “It affected a great quarrel between me and my brother in consequence of your showing him my letters previously, which he greatly misrepresented,” Virgil wrote. (14) Apparently people in town began to take sides. The discord in the priest’s own family surely made some wonder what was really going on.
In September Virgil thought things were resolved and wrote, “Another piece of good news. My enemies are all subdued, the tongue of slander is stopped, the cause of faith is triumphant. The particulars are too tedious.” He accused Daniel of trying to create discord in the letters he wrote to townsfolk back home.
A month later Virgil was writing to Father Dzierozynski again, in desperate financial circumstances. He had gone into debt to build the church, and paying his creditors left him without the funds to buy needed heating stoves and fuel for the New Hampshire winter. Mrs. Chase, the cook he employed, had consumption and probably was too ill to continue. Without heat and a cook, he could not keep the school open. Truworth was pressing him about the deed to the property and Virgil asked Father Dzierozynski to send a copy so he could put to rest whatever Truworth disputed.
In December, Virgil hadn’t received a reply to his last two letters and wrote to his superior again. Things worsened to the point that he had concerns for his safety:
“Things have now come to the last extremity. I am, and for some time have been, my own woodchopper, washer and cook. But now my provisions are exhausted, and my money is gone. I suffer abuse from my brother and his family beyond my powers to tell, set on by my poor father. I am slandered by them and they put my safety and my life in danger. Unless you can aid me, either I perish by cold and hunger or by violence, or I must stop the school and go in quest of something to eat and wear.”
It was certainly a dramatic turn of events. In January Truworth went around telling people that Virgil was going to be recalled. In fact, Virgil had already been told he was being recalled, a fact he hadn’t shared with his church members yet. Supportive parishioners considered it a rumor and circulated a petition, which 48 signed and sent from Claremont February 4, 1828, asking that “our beloved and respected Pastor,” be allowed to continue with them. The petition said that Truman, Laura and their housekeeper circulated “malicious reports” about Virgil. They called them “apostate Catholics of vile and worthless character” and said they would feel shame and indignation if these three were allowed to deprive them “of our holy religion.”(15)
In an understatement, a later Jesuit publication said that, “it became clear that family quarrels involving himself, his brother Trueworth and his father curtailed his effectiveness.” Truworth could not be removed from the home due to the deed Daniel signed with the Jesuits. Therefore, Virgil was recalled. (16) He closed the church and school, and at the end of February, deposited the keys with Bishop Fenwick in Boston. Virgil and the bishop grieved the fact that there simply was no replacement priest to send. St. Mary’s had to sit empty.
Virgil headed off on the long stagecoach journey to Georgetown. He was only there until May, when he returned to Boston. Bishop Fenwick begged Father Dzierozynski to let him keep Virgil in his diocese, serving a mission to the Indians in Maine. This was granted.
Indian Mission
At three o’clock in the afternoon, May 26, Virgil boarded a steamboat in Boston, bound for Portland, Maine. With him was a former student and protege, newly ordained Father James Fitton. (17) In fact, in Virgil’s few years operating the Claremont Catholic Academy, he produced three students who were subsequently ordained as priests. Fitton would be a faithful foot soldier - often walking long distances on foot, in fact, as a missionary throughout New England, the founder of four churches. He also started a school that became the College of the Holy Cross, the first Catholic college in New England.
Once in Maine, Virgil settled in Indian Old Town on the Penobscot River and Fitton was at Pleasant Point among the Passamaquoddy. In February 1829 Virgil made a return visit to Claremont, reporting a dismal state of affairs for a congregation at a closed church with no priest. It was also dismal at the Barber home, according to Virgil. In a letter to Father Dzierozynsk he wrote, “There’s constant quarrels in the family and sometimes one is chased out of the house, and sometimes another. My father had turned my sister out of doors a few days before I got there, and she was obliged to find shelter in one of the poorest and lowest families of the town. No respectable people notice anything of the family.” (18)
Like his Claremont church, an assessment of his Indian mission was a mixed. One the one hand, Virgil opened a new school in 1828 and a church the next year. He lobbied the Maine Legislature and governor for funds. But his efforts were largely thwarted because the Indian agent for the Penobscots, Joshua Chamberlain, opposed him. (19) October 1830 he was recalled to Georgetown once again.
In the End
In 1830 Susan entered the boarding school at the Ursuline convent at Three Rivers. However, the sisters found that she was far advanced compared to other students. She became a postulant in Dec 1830, just before her eighteenth birthday. She took the veil in March 1831, and final vows in 1833.
In 1831 Virgil was assigned to St. John’s College in Frederick, Maryland. The college was only a year old. (20)
April that year Truworth died and was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Claremont. In his will, he left everything to his nephew, John Charles Wheaton McKenna, Laura’s only child. In the event that John would die before receiving the inheritance, Truworth left his estate to the Jesuits. If he was an apostate or harbored angry feelings towards the Jesuits or the Catholic Church, it seems he worked them out.
Daniel made his final move south to St. Inigoes after Truworth’s death. He visited Virgil at St. John’s at least once. He also applied for, and received a pension for his services in the Revolutionary War. This amounted to less than $23 a year. He lived the rest of his life at the St. Inigoes mission house and died in 1835.
In August 1832 Virgil and Jerusha’s only son, Samuel, took his vows as a Jesuit and left for study in Rome. He would remain there until 1839.
In 1833 the baby of the Barber family entered the Visitation sisters as a postulant at age 16. She was the only one of the Barber girls to join her mother in the order. In April she was ordered to go with a group including Mother Agnes Brent to Kaskaskia, Illinois where they were to start a school and form a new convent. Mother Agnes was the novice leader who taught Jerusha when she joined the Visitandines in Georgetown.
In 1834 Susan died after being sick nearly her whole time at the Canadian convent. She was only 24. In December Josey took her final vows with the Visitandines and was simply named Sister Mary Josephine.
There was another major event that year that involved the family. The nation was shocked when anti-Catholic sentiment turned violent and the Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts was burned to the ground. Mary - Sister Mary Benedict - ran for her life along with her young students. With Bishop Fenwick’s support, the Ursulines attempted to reestablish a convent in Boston with Mary as sister superior. When the effort failed, she moved to the convent at Three Rivers. (21)
Jerusha was unexpectedly united with Josephine when she was ordered to move from Georgetown to Kaskaskia in 1836. The bishop saw a pressing need for more teachers there, but also Jerusha was known for her ability to teach teachers. Informed of her impending move, Virgil immediately left Frederick and went to Georgetown to see her for what he knew would be the last time. She had already left and was in Baltimore at a Sisters of Charity convent where Virgil’s cousin, Sister Genevieve Tyler, was the Sister Servant.
Jerusha stayed there about a week and she and Virgil had many long visits. She received permission to have him hear a confession of her entire life, but she also came with a list of questions for him. Questions from a lifetime together and apart; Virgil said he would answer the questions after confession, and did so. (22)
Samuel graduated with honors in 1839 and returned from Rome. He was assigned to teach at Georgetown College where he taught for the next five years.
In 1844 Mother Agnes Brent was asked to establish another Visitation monastery in St. Louis. She chose to take Jerusha and Josephine with her.
Virgil suffered a stroke in 1845 that left him paralyzed on his left side. Samuel was named master of novices at Frederick in 1846, and would remain there until 1851. He was able to make frequent visits to his father. Virgil survived until March 28, 1847. Mary died about a year later at Three Rivers. About four weeks after her oldest daughter’s death, Jerusha was ordered to move again. She and Josephine had unexpectedly gotten about a dozen precious years of living together in adulthood. But Mary Augustine’s skills were once again requested, this time at a Visitation monastery in Mobile. Once again, she and Josephine said good-bye to each other believing it was for the last time. Mary Augustine trained the Mobile nuns so well that the quality of the school improved and they were able to stop hiring secular teachers.
In 1851 Samuel was named president of Gonzaga College.
In 1855 Mary Augustine became gravely sick and the superior asked that Josephine be sent to take her place as a teacher. Jerusha recovered and was able to teach for another two years until consumption overtook her. Mother and daughter were together until Jerusha’s death in 1860. It is because of this and because a bishop asked Josephine to write a biography of her mother’s conversion that we have details today. Subsequently, Josephine was sent back to St. Louis.
In 1864 Samuel died. His last mission was as superior of the St. Thomas mission at Port Tobacco, Maryland.
Josephine died in St. Louis in 1897.
Epilogue
The Barbers and the Tylers lived in a fascinating time that coincided with the changes that industrialization, immigration and urbanization brought to America. With it came the tremendous growth of the nation, the Roman Catholic Church, and burgeoning new problems that needed solving. Virgil, Jerusha, Mary, Abbey, Susan, Samuel and Josephine Barber; and Rosetta, Sarah, William, Martha and Catherine Tyler responded with all their hearts, their lives a sacrifice to what they believed in.
An author famously wrote, “The past is a foreign country.” Just as it is impossible for us to have a complete understanding of their times, it’s impossible to say what they would think about the changes that have taken place in the U.S. and Canada since each of their deaths. Here’s a few snapshots:
New Hampshire now has a quarter of a million Catholics in 89 parishes.
In New England in 1990, fifty percent of the population was Catholic. However, just ten years later the number dropped to 36 percent. (23)
An estimated 40 percent of Americans under 30 are classified as “Nones” - a catchall term encompassing atheists, agnostics and those who say they have no religion in particular.(24)
St. Mary’s, now called Old St. Mary’s, the church Virgil started in Claremont, New Hampshire, celebrated its 200th anniversary in September 2023 with masses, a parish picnic and barbecue and guided tours. The same building Virgil built was lovingly restored in the 1960s. The original hardwood floors are intact. The original hardwood desks where Virgil’s students sat still remain, as do the wavy glass windows on the third floor. The church is used today for weddings and funerals, and mass is said every Saturday from late May to Columbus Day.
In April 2023 the Sisters of Charity of New York, announced that they would no longer accept new members – none had been forthcoming – acknowledging a “path to completion” with the current sisters dying out till none remained. Established in 1817 by Mother Seton, they spun off to a separate order in 1846. Like so many orders, their numbers peaked in the 1960s, with 1,300 sisters. At the time of their announcement, the last novice entered twenty years ago, in 2003, and their numbers were down to 154 sisters, with a median age of 65.(25) The sisters also announced on their website that they are passing the torch of their ministries to others. This has happened at convents and monasteries all over the country and in Canada.
The Ursuline convents where Mary and Susan Barber dedicated themselves to teaching and prayer are museums today.
In the 1960s, Josephine’s last home was torn down. The St. Louis Visitation convent and academy was built in 1892. It was a castle-like four-story French Chateau-style edifice. (The Kaskaskia convent was destroyed in a flood in the 1840s.)
In 2003, recognizing the decline in sisters, the Visitandines formed the St. Louis Visitation Association of Christian Faithful, a group committed to maintaining Salesian spiritual values at the Visitation Academy. They hoped that after they are gone, their values live on at the school.
In 2018 the last Visitation sisters moved from the monastery in St. Louis to Catherine’s Residence, a 24-hour care center operated by Sisters of Mercy.
The Visitation monastery in Mobile where Jerusha and Josephine taught is now a retreat center.
The Barbers and Tylers would surely be sad - and puzzled - by the increasing secularization of America, the tearing down and closing of their beloved buildings, the vanishing of sisters. But maybe they would marvel that women can play leadership roles in all aspects of society and not just in a convent. Maybe they would be amazed that women can be devout Catholics, dedicated teachers, nurses, social workers, administrators and so much more – and also have a husband and children. Surely they would be awed by the medical advances and professionalization of medicine, free public schools for all children, and no orphans wandering the streets.
The Barbers kept in touch with each other all their lives. They wrote frequently, and they took advantage of the few opportunities they had when they were allowed to see each other. There seems to be a sadness and yearning to be together that lasted till their deaths. They all looked forward to being reunited in heaven. One of Mary’s last letters before her death was typical. In February 1850 she wrote to her mother, saying, “ as soon as she should be in heaven she would try to get all our little family snuggly fixed there.”
Virgil once asked Jerusha to teach their daughters to say daily, “My God and my all!” They truly gave – and gave up – all they had in service of their faith.
Notes:
It is about a two-hour trip today.
This does not reflect the author’s opinion, but that of Virgil and the official position of the Church.
Rouillard.
Rouillard.
Rouillard.
Rouillard.
De Goesbriand.
De Goesbriand.
See Part III for details on their lives and missions.
De Goesbriand.
Rouillard.
Hudson Mitchell.
Rouillard.
Rouillard.
Rouillard.
Jesuit Heritage, Chapter 1.
De Goesbriand.
Rouillard.
Jesuit Heritage, Chapter 1.
It exists today as St. John’s Catholic Prep, Maryland’s oldest Catholic high school.
Mary’s story has been told in great detail in Nancy Schultz’ Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834.
Rouillard.
Lin.
Grose.
Henao.
Sources:
Barber, Virgil Horace. Woodstock College - Diary of Virgil Horace Barber (later S.J.), Georgetown University, https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/1041050
Boddy, Mary Gallagher. “Beyond Boston: Catholicism in the Northern New Borderlands in the Nineteenth Century,” (2015) Doctoral Dissertation. 2189. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/2189
Hannefin, Sister Daniel D.C., "Daughters of the Church: A Popular History of the Daughters of Charity in the United States 1809-1987" (1989). Vincentian Digital Books. 17.
McCann, Sister Mary Agnes. “The History of Mother Seton’s Daughters: Volume 1,” (1916) Vincentian Digital Books, 14.
McCarron, Edward T. “A Brave New World: The Irish Agrarian Colony of Benedicta, Maine in the 1830s and 1840s,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 105, No. ½ (Spring/Summer 1994), pp. 1-15.
McNeil, Betty Ann, D.C. “Historical Perspectives on Elizabeth Seton and Education: School Is My Chief Business,” Catholic Education, March 2006, pp. 284-306.
McNeil, Betty Ann, D.C. “Demographics of Entrants: Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s, 1809-1849 And Daughters of Charity, Province of the United States, 1850-1909,” Vincentian Heritage Journal, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Spring 2012), Article 4.
Mitchell, Hudson, S.J. “Virgil Horace Barber,” The Woodstock Letters, Vol. 79, No. 4, 1 Nov 1950, Society of Jesus.
Newspapers:
Lin, Joanne. “New England Surpasses West Coast As Least Religious Region in America, Study Finds,” Los Angeles Times, 16 March 2009.
Sauchelli, Liz. “St. Mary’s in Claremont, State’s Oldest Roman Catholic Church, Celebrates 200 Years,” Valley News (West Lebanon, New Hampshire), 4 Sept 2023.
Henao, Luis Andres. “The End of an Era for the Sisters of Charity of New York,” The Hill, 9 May 2023.
Grose, Jessica. “Americans Under 30 Don’t Trust Religion – Or Anything Else,” New York Times, 25 Nov 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/opinion/religion-nones-gen-z.html
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