The Curse of Kaskaskia and Sister Josephine Barber

 Kaskaskia. It’s an ancient name, dramatic and evocative. Kaskaskia is a river, a 325 mile tributary of the Mississippi in Illinois. It is the name of a people, a tribe that once was part of the Illinois Confederation. The few remaining members joined with the Peoria Confederation when they were forced to move to Indian Territory – Oklahoma – in 1867, ceasing to exist as a separate tribe.

     Kaskaskia was also a town, settled by French trappers and traders, with a population of 20,000 at its peak. It was once an important center, a key supply point for merchants throughout the Mississippi Valley, and Illinois’ first territorial capital. But by 1833, Kaskaskia’s glory days were over. It was on its way to the seeming extinction that came to the tribe.

     “Asleep or paralyzed,” wrote a priest around this time, Kaskaskia “lies dreaming over its past and its prospects are no more. No press, no railroad, no mill, no smoke of manufacture rising out of the blue sky, no bridge, only a flat boat drawn wearily by a rope from shore to shore on the Okaw (Kaskaskia) River. Why! a visitor would think he lived only two centuries past.”

     Yet this unpromising place was where a young postulant to the Visitation Sisters was headed in April 1833, sent to start a school. 

A Postulant’s Past

     Sixteen-year old Jane Barber, who was soon-to-be Sister Mary Josephine, had a very unusual childhood. Her parents, Virgil and Jerusha Barber, startled New England and farther afield when they converted to the Roman Catholic Church - then a struggling entity in the U.S., viewed with deep suspicion and prejudice. The shock continued when they obtained permission to dissolve the bonds of their marriage so Virgil could enter the priesthood. Jerusha reluctantly agreed to break up her family and join the Visitation Sisters of Georgetown at one of the only convents in the country. Jane was just a baby at the breast. Samuel, the only son, was preschool age. Three other daughters were old enough to join Jerusha, who became sister Mary Augustine, at the convent school. Arrangements were made for Jane and Samuel to stay with the bishop’s mother until they were school age. Then Jane too moved into the convent boarding school.

     Jane poignantly described her days with the bishop’s mother as the happiest of her childhood. They were her only experience with being comfortably cared for with any kind of childhood normalcy. Once in the convent, the Barber sisters were charity cases and their circumstances sound like being Cinderella with no ball and no prince coming. They wore cast-offs from the paying students, in shoes so big, sometimes, they could barely shuffle along. There was never enough food and no treats. Their mother took curtains down at night to cover them as a blanket. They lived the unrelenting regimented life of a convent school in the early nineteenth century, and each was encouraged – probably pressured – as young teens to join a convent and begin working. 

     The Ursulines were chosen for Jane’s sisters. Jane was staying with the Visitandines. 

A New Venture

     Sometime in 1832 or early in 1833, Bishop Joseph Rosati of the St. Louis Diocese, visited Kaskaskia. He spoke to the largely French-American congregation of his intention to establish a school and convent there for young ladies. It was difficult to find enough nuns to start the orphanages and schools that were needed as Catholic immigrants pressed west. Bishop Rosati exchanged letters with the Mother Superior at Georgetown. Apparently, he made promises. If they came to Kaskaskia, the parish priest would move out of his own home next to the church to provide a fledgling convent. The Mother Superior arranged for a pioneering group to split off  to establish the second Visitation convent in the U.S. They were:

• Mother M.H. Agnes Brent, superior

• Sister M. Genevieve King, assistant superior and mistress of novices

• Sister M. Gonzaga Jones, procuratrix, dispenser, etc.

• Sister M. Helen Flannigan, directress of school

• Sister M. Isabella King, teacher, sacristan, robier, etc.

• Sister M. Ambrosia Cooper, teacher

• Jane Barber, postulant, who was now referred to as Sister M. Josephine

• Catherine Rise Murray, lay sister, cook, etc.

Travel

     They left Georgetown on 17 April 1833. Transportation, especially over the Appalachians, was still an incredibly long and arduous affair. It would take them a month to move from Georgetown to the border of Illinois. In those days, it would not do for nuns - or women in general - to travel alone, and they were escorted by Richard Queen, brother-in-law of Sister Genevieve. About forty years later Sister Josephine described their trip. In Baltimore they saw their first trains - but they were drawn by horses, not steam engines.

     At Frederick they were met by Rev. Virgil H. Barber, S.J. – Josephine’s father. When father and daughter parted, they knew it would be the last time they would see each other. A cloistered nun, as Josephine was about to be, never left her convent, except for a major, rare occasion such as a move to a new mission. There would be no reason for Father Barber to travel west. It was a poignant parting. 

     The next day began the ascent of mountains in four-horse carriages. It took four or five days to arrive in Wheeling. There they took a steamboat to Louisville, arriving on a Saturday in time to go to confession with Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget. Flaget, a Supilcian priest, had some overlaps with the sisters. He’d traveled to Kaskaskia in the 1700s and taught at Georgetown. A French immigrant, he arrived in America in 1792 and was promptly sent to Vincennes, Indiana. He was first appointed bishop of Bardstown Diocese in 1808 - basically the whole western frontier. By the time the sisters met him, he had resigned from this post but was reinstated due to public outcry.

     The bishop said High Mass at Louisville cathedral the next day, a treat for the travelers.

The bishop, a Rev. Mr. Able and Mother Catherine of  the “White-cap” Sisters of Charity (known for their distinctive “flying nun-” type cornet) accompanied them through three-year old locks of the Louisville and Portland Canal. It was a two-mile passage bypassing the Falls of the Ohio, which were the only barrier to navigation between Pittsburgh and New Orleans. Previously, a difficult portage around them was necessary. Rev. Able was very discouraging about Kaskaskia. He said if they did not die of pleurisy the first winter they would be lucky.

Arrival

     Around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning of May 3, the captain of their steamboat put them out at St. Mary’s Landing in Missouri, there being no accommodation or conveyance on the Illinois side. The steamboat stopped opposite the residence of a Mrs. Davis which they were told was a tavern. Mr. Queen went to order breakfast; as they sat down to eat Mrs. Davis told them her home was actually a private residence. She frequently accommodated the priests from the Lazarist Seminary in Perryville as a courtesy. Also known as the Vincentians, they founded the first seminary west of the Mississippi in 1818. (St. Mary’s Seminary is now a national historic site. It closed as a seminary in 1985.) But she made it clear that she would not be able to put eight nuns and an escort up in her home.

     “We were now in a dilemma,” Josephine wrote. “The broad Mississippi rolled between us and our destination. We were not even in the State of Illinois and had no acquaintance in the country.” 

     Mr. Queen left at 8:00 for Kaskaskia to see what arrangements had been made for them. He returned after dinner with a dismal report that there was nothing done and they weren’t even expected. Mother Agnes was surprised as she’d been led to believe a house was being provided next to the church, the parish priest surrendering his own house for this purpose. There were the letters that said so. But in fact, they were now told, even if the priest had done this, the church and presbytery were in a dilapidated condition. Mr. Queen described Kaskaskia as “a poor, miserable and out-of-the-way little place.” Apparently the bishop stated his intentions to establish a school there, but had done nothing more. How could this be?

     Understandably, the Sisters wanted to return home. They were only dissuaded by Mother and Sister Gonzaga – and presumably, vows of obedience. The next afternoon their trunks and boxes were loaded on a flatboat. The luggage served as seats. The water came up almost to the edge of the heavily laden boat and “the sisters were so frightened they sat speechless,” Josephine wrote. “Broad and muddy as the river was, it could hardly be seen for the carpet of green caterpillars that covered it. On landing, the shore and trees were in the same predicament; whereas the sisters expressed their astonishment. It almost exceeded credibility.” 

     Today, the Visitation Academy in St. Louis commemorates this event with an annual ceremony in which students eat green gummy worms. Then, it was hardly a source of lighthearted fun.

     Once they crossed the river, three stage coaches awaited them, each about the size of a milk wagon back home. Rev. Matthew Condamine, parish priest, was there on horseback. Unknown to them was that Rev. Condamine was earnestly trying to leave Kaskaskia, to obtain permission from Bishop Rosati to serve a mission to the Indians. He thought he had another priest lined up as his replacement, but that priest, Father Benedict Roux, a recent French immigrant, had come to America specifically to evangelize the Indians. 

     Regardless, in a few minutes the Visitandines were on their way. Not long after their drivers announced the town was in sight. 

     “We strained our eyes, but could not find it,” Josephine said. They asked where the church was and a log structure was pointed to, but Immaculate Conception Church looked to them like a barn. The sisters were still looking ahead down the road for the town when they were stopped in front of the “elegant stone mansion” of William Morrison, “the only real building in the place.” One street intersected the village with almost no traffic present. Low log and frame structures were hidden by trees. 

     William Morrison’s sister-in-law, who lived with him and his wife, was a convert and “dissipated the prejudices of her relatives” to induce them to take the sisters in till arrangements could be made.  That was Josephine’s take on things, based on memories from decades before. It’s rather doubtful that William Morrison had a strong prejudice against Catholics, though, as his first two wives were French Catholics, but his third wife could have held such views. 

     Morrison (1763-1837) was a prominent merchant who owned stores in Kaskaskia and Cahokia, but more importantly, he ran a trade business up and down the Mississippi, including earlier business dealings with Lewis and Clark. He came from Philadelphia in 1790, sent there by uncle’s firm. 

     His home was two stories and an attic, and very roomy. The entire second floor was given over to the nuns. They had one small and two large bedrooms and a ballroom, which was no longer used after an earthquake caused a fissure in the wall, rendering it unsafe. However, they used it for walking while reciting the Divine Office. 

     The Morrison mansion garden backed up to the Catholic graveyard that was behind the church. This was important because, as cloistered nuns who normally saw outsiders only from behind a grille, they could go to mass without walking out in the street. Their first Sunday, Rev. Condamine preached in French. He explained the benefits of the sisters’ presence. 

The Curse of Kaskaskia

      They learned from the Morrisons of the curse of Kaskaskia. It was said an Indian put a curse on the town when he was prevented from marrying a Frenchman’s daughter. Supposedly he said, “May the filthy spot on which your altars stand be destroyed; may your crops be failures and your homes be dilapidated. May your dead be disturbed in their graves, and may your land become a feeding place for fishes!”

     Sickness, floods and earthquakes followed over the decades. There was the New Madrid  earthquake of 1811-1812 which had rendered the Morrison ballroom unsafe. 

     Mrs. Morrison suggested hopefully to the nuns that she heard there was a time limit on the curse, and that it had expired. 

A Convent of One’s Own

     Curse or no, on Monday they began to prepare their own house. A storefront was given to them at no cost by Col. Pierre Menard (1766-1844). Menard was a native of Quebec who came to Kaskaskia in 1790 and quickly became a prominent merchant and community leader. He was elected the first lieutenant governor of Illinois in 1818. His home is a state historic site today. 

     Menard had the counters and shelves removed in the old store and his carpenter built an altar and tabernacle. By the second Sunday the sisters had moved in and held mass there. Donations poured in from the community -- beds, pots and pans, kitchen utensils, blankets, and one chair each which they carried from refectory to assembly room to choir until benches could be built. The Morrisons’ slaves were made available to them and a hot breakfast of waffles or pancakes sent over daily. The slaves cut, hauled and stacked wood, started their fires, scrubbed their floors and hauled water from the river every Monday for laundry.

     The Visitation sisters were used to slavery and in fact owned, bought and sold slaves in Georgetown. Some postulants from wealthy Maryland planter families brought slaves with them as their dowry when they joined. There were few, if any, moral qualms to using their forced labor, and Josephine made no comment about it.

     Local residents also gathered water in a rather unique way: by placing a canoe under the eaves of the house. The slaves kept this canoe filled. 

     Morrison came by the new convent daily to see if anything more was needed. He gave the sisters two cows, sheep, hogs and chickens and sent hay and feed for the animals. He gave them a Franklin stove for the children’s refectory (a refectory being a dining room/recreation room), many volumes of books for a library, desks, tables, wash stands and many pairs of unworn shoes from his store. 

     Morrison also bought them a guitar and best of all, a piano. It was quite the novelty. It was said to be the first in Kaskaskia. Josephine said many area residents had never seen one, including Morrison’s three younger daughters. His oldest had been east and therefore was a bit more “worldly.” All the town’s children “and many grown people” came to see it.

     Menard was just as generous. He had his carpenter make each sister a bedstead and bedside table. His weaver wove 32 pairs of socks, two woolen and two cotton for each sister. 

     The store proved to be too small for their purposes, however, and after three weeks they moved again. This time it was to the old Kaskaskia hotel, a shambles of a building lacking glass in most of the windows. They moved in on June 1 and cut down the old hotel sign. They began transforming the barroom into the children’s refectory, playroom and classroom. The livery stable housed their cows, pigs and poultry. 

     The school opened and the Morrison and Menard families were the first to enroll. Morrison had four daughters of school age; Menard had one, Sophie, and several granddaughters and nieces whom he supported. These benefactors paid for all the extras – subjects such as instrumental music, fancywork and painting cost extra – and immediately made the school profitable. Menard also recommended the school to wealthy friends in St.Louis and elsewhere, ensuring a “full house.” When his daughter wanted to learn to play the harp he bought her one, and later gave it to the school. Without these benefactors’ support, the sisters could not have made the school a success. 

     Soon they had a choir performing at the church at Christmas and Easter, carrying the piano through town to the sanctuary for these performances. They became known for their instructional excellence.

Challenges

     Mother Agnes Brent must have been a clever person. For their first Christmas dinner in Kaskaskia, she invited Mrs. Menard to dine with them, and dispensed with their usual silence at meals. It was cold and snowy, and Mother Brent knew what would happen in the old hotel building. As they ate a sumptuous meal, prepared with help from Hagar, an old free Black woman they hired, snow sifted through the roof, and in spite of a roaring fire, it formed piles on the table. “Shortly afterward we had the roof repaired,” Josephine dryly noted. 

     They fixed up the loft of the livery stable for an elderly Lazarist priest who was a carpenter sent to help for the summer of 1834. He made benches, desks and cupboards. They gave up more space in the hotel/convent when they hired a live-in washer woman. 

Josephine's account of their hardships was written decades later. At the time, in a July 1833 letter to her sister Abby, an Ursuline nun in Three Rivers, Canada, she put a completely positive spin on things.

"It is the most quiet, peaceable little town I ever saw.... Our house is large and convenient, formerly a hotel and really built after the manner of a monastery....The infant foundation is rising rapidly and you will agree with me, as it is but a few months since our settlement here, and branches are taught which were not thought of in Georgetown for many years." She described what sounded like an ideal spaciousness and arrangement of rooms. None of the hardships were mentioned.

     But Mother Agnes clearly found their arrangement wanting. In the summer of 1835 Bishop Rosati again made a swing through town and she spoke with him about having their own building constructed. He accompanied her on a tour of prospective sites for sale, and Col. Menard advanced them the money to purchase. Supplies and labor were in such short supply that a year later only a foundation was built. Menard had a brick kiln constructed, but without workmen it sat idle. Their architect next proposed that they build a frame building as carpenters were more available. In August 1838 they moved at last to their own convent, a long two-story structure that resembled a steamboat with its gleaming white paint, green shutters and piazza. 

     This happy event was followed by the death of a postulant; Sister Ambrosia in October, and Sister Gonzaga in December. Adding to their sadness, Fathers Condamine and Roux had returned to France leaving the parish without a priest. Bishop Simon Brute, first bishop of the newly carved-out Vincennes diocese, came to stay with them for several weeks. They made an apartment for him in their bakehouse, where they already housed six orphans. In fact, they were crowded everywhere. Two or three girls slept in each nun’s cell. 

     Their chapel was not yet completed and that cold winter caused much suffering. Even with roaring fires, the convent stayed so cold that once Sister Catherine, the lay sister and cook, called them in to look at her pots and pans on the fire. The food was frozen on one side and bubbling merrily on the other. The ink froze in the children’s pens during lessons. They used lard lamps as gas and oil were not yet available and whale oil was too expensive. The lard would freeze in the bottom of the lamp, however, and it took a good thirty minutes to warm enough to melt again. The lard was also expensive and they saved it for evening recreation only. 

In 1837 Josephine's mother, Sister Mary Augustine, was sent to Kaskaskia to serve as head of the school. She was known as the most accomplished teacher the Visitation sisters had, and she was used to train nuns to be teachers.

     In 1841 a chaplain was finally assigned to the convent and the sisters could have the daily mass they longed for. 

A New Mission

     As the county grew, and with it the Catholic population, the enormous western diocese was carved up. There was a pressing need for schools, hospitals and orphanages at a time when government provided none. Mother Agnes was asked to start a new Visitation House in St. Louis. Josephine was one of six sisters chosen for the mission. April 14, 1844, they celebrated mass, had breakfast, and left with two of their students and the girls’ father, a Major Graham, as their escort. They rode for thirty to forty minutes until they reached a house on the banks of the Mississippi. It was an accommodation for arrivals and departures, and here they waited for a boat to pass by. Half an hour later, they heard the distinctive huffing of a steamboat, and a man raised a flag up a flagpole. Minutes later, the steamboat rounded a bend into view and headed toward them. Soon the nuns were on board.

     Around 10:00 a.m., the doors separating the men’s and women’s sections were thrown open and a minister in a silk gown stood in the center. He began a “most edifying discourse.” He was a Cambellite preacher, and the sisters listened respectfully. Josephine said some of the passengers must have wondered if they were being converted. 

     Six hours later they arrived in St. Louis and were taken to the City Hospital where they were the guests of the Sisters of Charity. 

The Flood

     “But let us return to our sisters in Kaskaskia,” Josephine wrote. Josephine measured time in terms of saints’ days and the Church calendar. Something occurred on the feast day of St. Aloysius or Augustine; on the octave of the Epiphany, Easter Wednesday, Low Sunday or the Finding of the Holy Cross. At Easter that year, around the time Josephine’s group departed, the river was high, and rising. That was normal for spring, however, so no one thought anything of it, but before the feast of St. Aloysius – June 21 – the Okaw began to flood the fields and gardens of Kaskaskia. On the saint’s day, water flooded their convent basement. The next morning, their well caved in during mass. It was too dangerous to remain. Amadee Menard, one of the colonel’s sons, brought a flat boat “propelled by strong rowers” and gathered Mother Isabella and several sisters, taking them to his home on the bluffs east of the Okaw. 

     Those remaining had mass at the convent the next morning and immediately began packing. The priest dispensed Sunday obligation and the sisters worked frantically to take everything out of the chapel and the pictures on all the walls. A group sewed bags all day to slip these treasures in; others packed the practical kitchen utensils. By nightfall the kitchen was underwater. Everything was loaded into boats and taken to Amadee Menard’s home. The sisters and their students were evacuated there too.

     Bishop Francis Kenrick, unaware of any problems, was on his way to Kaskaskia for a visit with two priests who would later also become bishops. The nature of their visit changed dramatically when they arrived and found the homeless sisters and their charges huddled at the Menard home. Displaced townsfolk settled on the grounds in tents and under awnings. 

     When the convent flooded, the school had fifty students. All but sixteen were taken in by local friends and family. As Amadee Menard wasn’t sure what to do with all the sisters and sixteen children, the arrival of the priests was fortunate. Two worked to secure transportation to St. Louis. Rev. John Timon flagged down a steamboat on its way to the city, persuaded the captain to unload his cargo, and to turn his boat into the Okaw River. Everyone was evacuated to this boat, which then steamed to the convent. Half was underwater. The steamboat was lashed to its side and the priests and sisters carried the furniture and valuable musical instruments on board including the beloved pianos and harps. At two o’clock, June 26, 1844 they got their last look at their home, as the steamboat pulled away. 

St. Louis

     Josephine ends her account abruptly.  They operated another school on Ninth Street until 1857. A generous benefactor, Mrs. Ann Mulanphy Biddle, bequeathed them land on Cass Avenue, and a convent was built which they occupied from 1858 to 1892. They built a grand new castle-like structure in the Cabanne neighborhood that was torn down in the 1960s. The Cass Avenue convent became a Lazarist seminary.

     Josephine’s mother was sent from Georgetown to join her sisters – and daughter – in St. Louis. Sister Mary Augustine was known as an exceptionally gifted teacher, and was used to train other teachers. Mother and daughter rejoiced to be together again for some years, then Sister Augustine was sent to a Visitation convent in Mobile, Alabama. 

     

The Curse of Kaskaskia Revisited

     Steamboats changed America, opening the country and speeding transportation. They also had a devastating ecological effect. Deforestation resulted from cutting wood from the banks of rivers to power the boat’s engines. 

     Kaskaskia was mostly swept away in the flood of 1844. It was rebuilt in reduced form. But the erosion of the shoreline along the Mississippi contributed to the town’s demise. Another flood in 1881 shifted the Mississippi eastward and destroyed the original site. Kaskaskia once stood on a peninsula. Today it is an island with a population of about eighteen people. 

     The curse seemed to have come true. The altars were gone, the crops failures, the homes dilapidated and inundated. The dead were disturbed in their graves, and after the 1881 flood some 2,000 were moved. The land did indeed become “a feeding place for fishes!”

     

Josephine

     The flood led to Josephine being reunited with her mother once more. From 1844 to 1848 they taught together in St. Louis. Then Mary Augustine was sent to a convent in Mobile, Alabama. In 1860 Josephine was sent to Mobile to help her ailing mother, and to record her story. Each time they parted from each other – in Georgetown when Josephine moved to Kaskaskia, then in Kaskaskia, finally when Sister Augustine was moved to Mobile, they thought they would never see each other again. Now they had the blessing of each other’s company once more. After her mother died, Josephine was transferred back to St. Louis. She died of cancer at the Visitation convent in St. Louis at age 81 in 1887. 

     

Family Connection: My third great-grandfather, Myron Fitch Barber, and Rev. Virgil Horace Barber were first cousins. Sister Josephine, then, was his second cousin.

Sources:

          Barber, Mary Josephine. “First House of the Sisters of the Visitation at Kaskaskia, Illinois, A.D,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 13, no. 2 (1902): 211–26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44207787     

     Crosby, Tim. “SIU Researchers Seek Lost Community: The Original Site of Kaskaskia,” 15 Feb 2023, https://news.siu.edu/2023/02/021523-SIU-researchers-seek-lost-community-the-original-site-of-Kaskaskia.php

     DeGoesbriand, Louis. Catholic Memoirs of Vermont and New Hampshire (Burlington,: Press of R.S.Styles, 1886), 90, Princeton Theological Seminary, Theological Commons,

https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/catholicmemoirso00dego

      “Establishment of the Ursulines at Kaskaskia, Illinois, 1833,” The American Catholic Historical Researches 7, no. 3 (1890): 110–12. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44373665.

“History of Forestry Management on the Mississippi River,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, https://www.mvr.usace.army.mil/Missions/Recreation/Mississippi-River-Project/Natural-Resource-Management/Forestry-Management/Forestry-Mgt-History/

     “The History of Enslaved People at Visitation,” https://www.visi.org/our-mission/history-of-georgetown-visitation/history-of-enslaved-people-at-visitation

     Swarns, Rachel L. “The Nuns Who Bought and Sold Human Beings,” New York Times, 2 Aug 2019.

     Taylor, Troy. “A Town Called Kaskaskia,” Haunted Illinois, 2000, https://www.hauntedillinois.com/realhauntedplaces/kaskaskia.php

 

Newspapers

         “The Great Western Flood,” Charleston Daily Courier, 22 July 1844, p. 2. 

    “Death of a Nun. Sister Mary Josephine Dies After Fifty Years of Confinement,” Leavenworth Standard, 16 July 1887, p. 1. 

     Bassford, Homer. “Academy of Visitation Here Has Aided Cultural Life For Century,” The St. Louis Star and Times, 29 April 1933, p. 6.

Copyright by Andrea Auclair  © 2024