Archive for November 30, 2009

November 30, 2009 Craig Uncategorized

I received a comment on the recent post,  The Florence Crittenton Homes from Jeannette Yeunyul Pai-Espinosa, President of the National Crittenton Foundation:

Thanks Craig for including us here! Today there are 27 Crittenton agencies in 24 states still supporting the empowerment and self sufficiency of young women and their families. Today, Dr. Barrett’s great granddaughter serves on our Board of Trustees and the family legacy lives on. Don’t hesitate to let us know if we can be of support to you in your efforts. You might be interested to know about our Young mothers @ the margin campaign, http://www.AtTheMargin.org, which links digital story telling with a social policy initiative designed to ensure that young mothers have the supports they and their children need to thrive!

In this season, this winter of so much discontent, I would urge you to click on the links, learn about the Foundation’s important work, and consider these young women when you are giving.

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Black Catholic History Month: The Knights of Who?

November 30, 2009 Craig Family History, Genealogy

“Claverism” observes 100th Anniversary in USA

Every Catholic and many a non- Catholic recognizes the name of the largest Catholic lay organization in the world, the Knights of Columbus.  This is a group of “practical” Catholic men who do charitable acts.  Indeed, over the last ten years, the “K of C” have donated more than a billion dollars to charitable causes.  The Knights of Columbus were chartered as a fraternal organization in Connecticut  in 1882.

Far fewer Catholics and others have heard of the Knights of Peter Claver.   This organization was founded in 1909 at Most Pure Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Mobile, Alabama.  The organization was founded to give “colored men” a Catholic fraternal organization. (Yes, sadly, there was a time that those other Knights allowed  no “colored men” among them.  Fortunately those days are gone.)  Like the Knights of Columbus, the Knights of Peter Claver are engaged in charitable works.  from their start in Alabama a century ago, they now have over 1000 subordinate units around the country.

CentennialEmblem2KoPC

But who was Peter Claver?

Pedro Claver Corbero (1580-1654) was born in Verdu, Catalonia.  After advanced Jesuit education in Barcelona, Tarragon, and Majorca,  Claver followed the call of God to minister  to slaves in South America.  In 1610, he traveled to Cartagena, Colombia, at the time, the leading slave port in the world.

Claver cared for the poor and the sick slaves.  He created a corps of catechists to teach the slaves the Bible.   It is said that Claver  baptized over 300,000 slaves in his 44-year career.  For his service to the slaves, Claver earned the title of “slave to the slaves.” In 1896, nearly 250 years after his death, Claver was declared patron saint of missions to African slaves.  Today, he is recognized as patron of slaves, Colombia, African Americans, and race relations.

The Knights of Peter Claver strive to carry out their charitable works with the same selflessness as St Peter Claver himself.

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Black Catholic History Month: Black Catholics in the South

November 30, 2009 Craig Family History, Genealogy

The notion of black Catholics in the South is not often the subject of much discussion by anyone, anywhere.  The southern United States is frequently thought of as having been settled largely by Scots-Irish and English people, not exactly fans of the Church of Rome.   The South is caricatured as a bastion of Baptists and, if one wants “high church,” Presbyterians.  Beyond that, outsiders think of marginal cult-like Christianity in the South with practices regarded as odd, if not outright ridiculous.   Blacks in the South are stereotyped as Baptists, but rarely thought of as being anything like Catholic.

Of course, these preconceptions fail to serve anyone or respect anybody’s beliefs.   Southern Protestants, black and white, are quite a complex and diverse group.   And southern black Catholics were among the first Catholics in North America.

We have previously discussed St Augustine, Florida, where a black child was baptized by a Catholic priest in 1606.  This was more than a quarter-century before the arrival of the first Catholic settlers in Maryland.

One might reasonably say that the South was the birthplace of black Catholicism.  The geopolitical history of the region beginning in the sixteenth century explains this point.

Near the end of the fifteenth century, the crowns of Aragon and Castile were united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella.  The unified kingdom had its internal problems to be sure, but the old adage “two crowned heads are better than one” proved true as Aragon-Castile embarked on  a number of imperial expeditions and conquests.  Among these, of course, were successful forays into North America.   At one point, “Spain” [as the merged kingdoms became known popularly] controlled what is now Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and parts of Georgia and Louisiana.

The Spanish brought black slaves with them to Florida in the sixteenth century.   The Spanish viewpoint on slavery was vastly different from that  of their enemies, them British.  The Spanish had white, as well as black slaves, so for the Spanish, slavery was not completely tied up with race.  Furthermore, Spanish law, heavily influenced by the Church, regarded slaves as human beings and not as property.  As a result, Spanish slaves were frequently baptized, permitted to marry, and encouraged to  have families.

Such attitudes were reinforced when the Bourbons took the Spanish Crown in 1700.   The French, too, controlled large areas of southern North America and held similar views  about slavery.  The South was an incubator for Catholicism among blacks.

There are several significant black Catholic locales in the South, other than St Augustine.   The Diocese of Biloxi, Mississippi, though a late 20th century creation, owes its black Cathodic roots to the era of  Spanish rule. The same could be said of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, with respect to the French.

But in the nineteenth century, both Spain and France, otherwise and elsewhere engaged,  lost their  North American territories to Britain and the United States.   As the plantation system spread across the South, the demand for more black labor grew.  French and Spanish laws were replaced by harsh slave codes.  The number of black Catholics dwindled in number and proportion.

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Black Catholic History Month: The Josephite Fathers and Brothers

November 30, 2009 Craig Family History, Genealogy

Earlier in the month, we discussed the life of Father Charles Uncles, the first black priest both trained and ordained in the United States. He was instrumental in the founding of the Society of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart.   This order of priests and religious were founded to evangelize the recently freed blacks in America.

Actually, there had already existed a Catholic organization called the Josephites, the St Joseph Mission Society, founded in London in 1866.  At the request of a council of American bishops, the Mission society sent some of its personnel to the United States to establish missions and schools for freedmen.

In 1893, just two years after his ordination, Father Charles Uncles was asked to help reorganize the Mission Society offices into a permanent American institution.  He and four other priests did just that, forming the  Society of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart in Baltimore.

Today, Josephites are active throughout the nation, and have parishes in Alabama, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, Washington, D.C., as well as Maryland.  The Josephites aren’t exclusively African-American.  Historically there have been more white Jospehite priests than black.  But this order of dedicated religious men holds great significance for the African–American community inside and outside the Catholic Church.

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The Florence Crittenton Homes

November 24, 2009 Craig Family History, Genealogy

Adoptions and adoptees pose special problems for genealogists.  And of course adoptees themselves have may have a difficult time tracing their genealogy.  Last Saturday was National Adoption Day in fact it was the 10th anniversary of national adoption day.  Coincidentally that day I was working on a blog entry called the “Black Catholics in My Family.” One of them was Amos R. Johnson Jr., of Kansas City, Missouri.  As I was researching Amos Johnson, I discovered that he had been a board member of something called the Florence Crittenton Home in Kansas City.  That led to several further discoveries.

First, I found out that that Kansas City once was the “baby hub” of the United States.  The Kansas City Public Library explains that:

Its central location in the United States with easy access by railroad contributed to Kansas City becoming “the baby hub of the United States.” The back page of a Willows pamphlet called Interesting Willows’ Statistics (1921) features a map of railroad lines across the United States all leading into Kansas City. The caption reads, “A glance at a railroad map of the United States will show the splendid position of Kansas City for the care of unfortunate young women. Its easy access from all directions, excellent train service and central location gives it the pre-eminent position in the country for its work.”

Kansas City Public Library, Special Collections, Local History

But more importantly I learned about the Frances Crittenton Homes.

Charles N. Crittenton was a wealthy pharmacist in New York City. In 1882, his five-year-old daughter Florence died and in her memory (some sources say “at her dying request”), he devoted the rest of his life to philanthropy, in particular, founding rescue homes for “unfortunate girls.”  These were girls who were pregnant or trying to leave prostitution. In the 1890s, Crittenton met Dr. Kate Waller Barrett, a pioneering female physician, who joined his cause. Dr. Barrett had very progressive views for her times.  She helped build Crittenton’s organization into more than 75 homes in the United States, in addition to homes in China, France, Japan and Mexico.  Many of the larger cities in the United States had a Florence Crittenton home.

charles crittendenCharles Nelson Crittenton (1833-1909)

Photo c.1913 from pamphlet What A Young Woman Ought to Know, by Mrs. Mary Wood-Allen, M.D., National Sperintendent, Purity Department, Womens Christian Temperance Union.  Pamphlet part of the “Sex & Self” series (Copyright 1913, Sylvanus Stall, London) [Available at Project Gutenberg]

The Crittenton organization was known as the National Florence Crittenton Mission.  Originally headquartered in Washington, DC, today it is known as the National Crittenton Foundation and is located in Portland, Oregon. Nationwide, there are many Crittenton institutions carrying on the work inspired by Charles Crittenton and Kate Waller Barrett, who succeeded Crittenton as president of the organization when he died 100 years ago this month.

crittenden-nyt

The New York Times, Wednesday, November 17, 1909, page 9

Over the last 125 years, a number of babies have been adopted out of Crittenton homes.  But more importantly the Crittenton homes have helped many young girls and women keep their babies and live productive, enriched lives.

Kate_Waller_BarrettKate Waller Barrett, M.D. [nee Katherine Harwood Waller] (1857-1925)

Photo (date unknown) from the George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress

We’ll write more  adoption and genealogy later this week and more about Kate Waller Barrett during Women’s History Month next March.

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Black Catholic History Month: Preserving St Augustine’s Documents

November 24, 2009 Craig Family History, Genealogy

Okay, the headline takes some liberty: we’re talking about saving Catholic records in  St Augustine, Florida, America’s oldest city. But before we get to that, let’s understand why we’re covering this during Black Catholic History Month (not that it wouldn’t always be of interest to those interested in Catholic history generally).

In a number of communities around America you will find parishes named for  St. Monica, frequently in African-American neighborhoods.  She was an Algerian Christian of Berber descent.  Although not of the same racial group as most African-Americans, was embraced by early African-American Catholics as someone of virtue from Africa.  St. Augustine’s father was a man named Patricius, from whom Augustine probably got most of the vices of which he famously asked God to relieve him, “but not quite yet.”  So Augustine was half North African.  As a result St. Augustine himself holds a place of  special reverence for some African-Americans.

The city we now know as St. Augustine Florida, was founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers. This was decades before any European settlement in North America.  And  the history of the city from then until now is inextricably bound up with the history of African-Americans. The earliest record of a black child being born in America is from St. Augustine in 1606, more than a decade before blacks first arrived in Virginia in 1619.  It is, of course, a baptismal record.

first_mass

The first Catholic Mass in North America was celebrated at St Augustine, Florida in 1565 (Image courtesy of Roman Catholic Diocese of St Augustine)

You may recall from your high school history that the British and the Spanish did not get along very well in the days of the 16th century through the 18th century. The British tried a number of times to dispossess the Spanish of Florida, but were mostly unsuccessful. The Spanish provided sanctuary for slaves who escaped from the British colonies in North America.  The first such area of sanctuary was in St. Augustine in 1738, known as Fort Mose.

mose1

Right: Artist’s rendition of Fort Mose, haven for freed slaves near St Augustine, Florida. The military commander of Fort Mose, officially known as Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, Captain Francisco Menendez, was an escaped slave from South Carolina. [Image courtesy, US Dept of the Interior, National Park Service]


Black Catholics were not  novel around St Augustine.

Within [the Cathedral-Basilica of St Augustine] , a certain number of marriages took place between African-Americans and Spanish Catholics. More common were baptisms of Catholic children born of Catholics and African-Americans, with various religious rights being passed to slave children. One example is found in Zephaniah Kingsley, a fabulously wealthy plantation owner in what is now Duval County, who took Anna Magigene Jai, the daughter of an African chieftain, as his acknowledged wife. While the couple was married outside the church, Anna remained a devout Catholic and throughout the early 1800’s made sure that priests from the Cathedral in St. Augustine traveled to the Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island to baptize each of their four children.

Historical Overview of the Roman Catholic Dicoese of St Augustine, Florida

Then came the so-called French and Indian war (or the Seven Years’ War as it was known in Europe).  When that war was over in 1763, the Treaty of Paris gave Florida to the British.  When war broke out between Britain and its colonies in the 1770s, St. Augustine became a Loyalist community. however, the Spanish crown sided with the colonists.  As a result, when the war was over, the new United States ceded any claim to Florida to the Spanish.

As for slavery, under Spanish rule after the Revolutionary war, Florida continued to welcomed runaway slaves as long as they converted to Catholicism and swore allegiance to the king of Spain. A number of slaves escaped to Florida from Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama.

But Spanish rule in Florida came to an end in 1821. Spain being then preoccupied with Napoleon found it prudent to give Florida to the United States.  During the American Civil War, Florida became a Confederate state. The one US soldier at the fort in St. Augustine was dispossessed by Florida state troops in January 1861.  However a force of Union troops retook St. Augustine in March of 1862.

Despite its status as a haven for escaped slaves in an earlier era, Florida soon adopted Jim Crow laws.  When the civil rights movement began, it played out in St. Augustine just about the way it did across the most of the South: protests by supporters of civil rights resulted in them being jailed by the hundreds and violent backlashes by groups like the KKK.

Today, however, St. Augustine is a peaceful historic village of about 12,000 people.   Its historic district includes such as national historic landmarks as Fort Mose, where that original haven for escaped slaves was established.

St. Augustine is proud of its heritage and history and now efforts are underway to preserve historic documents of the Church.

The Associated Press reported last week:

Sister Catherine Bitzer slowly opened a file box and carefully removed a brittle page, scarred by years of neglectful storage, mold and insects. At 415 years old, the marriage record written by a Roman Catholic priest is still readable and is one of the oldest known European records from the United States.

It’s among thousands of artifacts detailing the lives of the Spanish soldiers, missionaries and merchants who settled St. Augustine, the nation’s oldest permanent city. The church kept the only official records, a role that today is filled by government.

Read the rest of the story here at Google News.  To learn more about the city of St Augustine, check out one of Denise Olson’s great blogs, Family Matters, Moultrie Creek, or Graveyard Rabbitt of Moultrie Creek

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Black Catholic History Month:First Black Priest in the USA? A Third Contender

November 22, 2009 Craig Family History, Genealogy

Last week I wrote about the question of the first black Catholic priest in America.  I said the answer to that question depended upon who you asked.  I now know that the answer to the question depends upon how the you ask the question!  This is because there has emerged yet a third contender for “first black priest”.

First a little personal background: I don’t think I ever saw a black Catholic priest until I was well into my adulthood.  I guess I assumed that there were some somewhere; I just never thought that much about it.  But when I was in my 20s, my dad began the practice of sending me a calendar every year from an order of priests called the Josephites.  This is an order of priests, officially known as the St. Joseph Society of the Sacred Heart, formed in 1893 to minister to African-Americans.  The man given credit for leading the founding of the Josephites was Father Charles Randolph Uncles, a native of Baltimore.  Sunday, November 8, 2009, marked the 150th anniversary of Father Uncles’ birth.

Father Uncles is the third contender for the title of first black priest in America.  You may recall from the previous article, that Bishop James Healy and Father Augustus Tolton are the first two contenders for the title.  We resolve that issue by deciding that Bishop Healy, descendant of an Irishman and a slave woman, under the “rules” of racial identity may deserve the title of first black American priest, although he would not have wanted it.  But Father Tolton, descendant of two slaves, is entitled to be called the first black priest in America born of slave parents. In the minds of some, this may make Father Tolton the more “authentic” first “black priest in America.”

So where does Father Uncles fit in? His parents, Lorenzo Uncles and Annie Marie Buchanan, both had been slaves.  Charles Randolph Uncles was ordained in 1891 –after both Healy and Tolton had been ordained.  But remember, it depends upon how you ask the question.  Uncles was ordained in New York City.  Both Healy and Tolton, though Americans, could not attend seminary in the United States because of racism and therefore were ordained outside the United States.  So Father Uncles rightfully can be called the “first black priest ordained in America.” [It should be noted, speaking of the "rules" of racial identity, that Charles Uncles and his parents were described as being light enough to pass for white.]

Indeed, at the time, it was big news.  Here’s the New York Times headline from December 19, 1891:
CR Uncles-NYT

The Times story noted:

The congregation gathered to witness and participate in ceremonies was more than usually large and included many of the best colored people of the city. A special reason for the presence of the latter was that the first man of their race to be ordained a priest in the United States and that he was to have that high honor bestowed upon him by the Cardinal Archbishop himself–the primate of episcopacy of the country.

Lorenzo and Annie Uncles were Catholics.  They and their family attended Mass at St. Frances Xavier Church in Baltimore which was, as the New York Times put it, “a church for colored people, but from which whites were not excluded.”

As a young man, Charles was an altar boy at St. Frances Xavier.  He graduated number one in his high school class.  After that, he taught in the Baltimore County public schools until he was 25 years old.  During this same period of time, he was being tutored by a priest from St. Joseph’s seminary(for black men only) in Baltimore.  Finally in 1883, Charles Uncles went to St. Hyacinth’s College in Canada, graduating in 1888.  Back in Baltimore he then entered St. Joseph’s seminary.  But he applied to attend classes at St. Mary’s Seminary which was for white men.  The faculty of St. Mary’s put the matter to a vote of the seminarians.  They were unanimously in favor of admitting Charles Uncles.  And so it was that three years later, he was ordained a priest.  He began teaching at the Epiphany Apostolic College, which was then located in Baltimore.  In 1925, the college moved to New Windsor, New York, and Father Uncles moved also.

He died on July 20, 1933 at the college, and is buried there.

Coming up: The Josephite Priests

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And Another Thank You . . .

November 19, 2009 Craig Uncategorized

. . . to the California Genealogical Society & Library’s 2009 Nominating Committee, which has nominated me to be a new board member.

Read about the upcoming board elections and other doings in the CGS Blog.

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Thank You to . . .

November 19, 2009 Craig Family History, Genealogy

. . . Randy Seaver of Gena-Musings and Katie O’Hara of You Are Where You Came From, both of whom presented me with the Kreativ Blogger award in the past week!

kreative_blogger

The rules are that a recipient must reveal seven thing about oneself and then pass the ward on to seven other deserving bloggers.   So seven things about me that you don’t know:

1. I was  a registered lobbyist in New Mexico at age 14–advocating for the 18 year old voting law.

2. My favorite film is Fargo.

3. In my working life of 35 years or so, I’ve had more women bosses than male ones.

4. I was born in a hospital equidistant between the Missouri state Capitol and the Missouri State Penitiary [so I'm told--I don't remember!]

5.  I have flown a jet plane around Pikes Peak.

6.  I have two dogs [which surprises even me! Never in my wildest dreams. . . . I was always a cat person].

7.  I have two cats!

So there you go!  Now to pass the award on:  my philosophy about this is not to duplicate awards if possible, and to use the awards as a way to spotlight interesting writers.  This is harder than you might think, because there are so many good ones out there.   With that in mind, I give the Kreativ Blogger award to:

1.   The Missouri State Genealogical Association Messenger, eidted by Tom Pearson.

2. Be Not Forgot published by Vicki Everhardt

3. 100 Years in America by Lisa

4. Granny’s Genealogy written by Pam Warren

5.  Elyse ‘s Genealogy Blog by Elyse Doerflinger

6. The Itawamba History Review: The Itawamba Historical Society, edited by Bob Franks

7. Before My Time, by TK Sand

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Black Catholic History Month: The Catholics in My Families

November 16, 2009 Craig Family History, Genealogy

The number of black Catholics in the United States is small.  I know this both anecdotally and empirically.   I  was probably a teenager before I met another black Catholic family.   My parents, each for their own reasons,  converted to Catholicism as teenagers.   They did not know each other at the times of their conversions.

My mother was raised as the granddaughter and niece of Baptist preachers, and not surprisingly was the cousin of a couple more Baptist preachers.  Later, she was active in Methodist youth activities.   But having concluded for her own reasons that she belonged in the Catholic Church, she’s been a faithful and devout Catholic for, well, let’s just say more than a few decades.    I never knew until recently that there were other Catholics in her family tree.  For example, her cousin Amos Johnson, Jr. (1908-1975) , grandson of

Amos R. Johnson, Jr.

Amos R. Johnson, Jr.

Ezekiel Johnson and Sarah Gilbert, was Catholic.     A longtime federal civil servant, he was a member of Blessed Sacrament Church in Kansas City, and served on the Catholic Interracial Council and the National Council of Catholic Men.  He is buried in Mt Olivet Cemetery in Kansas City.  I don’t know how much more of the Johnson branch of the family was Catholic or how any of them can to be Catholic.

On my father’s side of the family, uncle  Herman Walker (1906-2002) was a Catholic. He was born the son of my dad’s grandmother, Hattie Bryant.  Living his mother’s peripatetic life,  would seem not conducive to regular religious instruction except of the most primitive sort.   I do know that Herman became Catholic about the time he met and married Ida Mouton, a Louisiana woman who was a life-long Catholic.   H became very active in St Paul’s parish in Houston where he attended Mass for nearly seventy years.   He was a member of the Knights of Columbus.

cmm-herman-walker


Herman Arthur Walker (1906-2002), our only known Catholic paternal uncle, with my sister, in Houston, Texas, 1962.

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