By Msgr. Noel C. Burtenshaw

It stands just outside the city of St. Louis. It is comfortable, cheerful and bright. The senior sisters of the famed religious community, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, live in Nazareth Home. All told there are 150 sisters living there.

We were interested in one. Most graciously she received us. She is 89, still most alert, her memory as sharp as ever. She is Sister Eulalia Murray and she is the very last one remaining of a special band of religious women. They were indeed pioneers, unique, a group that, hopefully, the Catholics of the State of Georgia will remember and cherish.

Sister Eulalia was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1895. In June 1913, as a young woman of 18 years, she came to Atlanta. She came to join a religious community of nuns called the Sisters of St. Joseph of Georgia. The novitiate for the order was situated on the old Marist property beside Sacred Heart Church at Baker and Ivy Streets.

“My aunt, Sister Zita Kennedy, was a professed sister in the Georgia community,” said Sister Eulalia, “and I admired her very much. I wanted to be a member of the community that worked and belonged to the Church in Georgia.”

Sister Eulalia remarked that “only a small group entered” that year. “There were merely six or seven of us who joined.” A few years later, in 1922, because vocations were sparse and numbers were few, the Georgia community of sisters would merge with the Carondelet Province in St. Louis. It would end a chapter of splendid service that began 55 years earlier when the Sisters of St. Joseph of Georgia were born in Savannah.

Le Puy, a town in the South of France, was the birth place of it all. The Sisters of St. Joseph were founded in that city back in 1640. They were founded to care for the poor, the sick and the orphaned. Interestingly enough, the sisters were given no habit, but, like the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, they were to minister, unknown, to the community where they lived. Today, the Sisters of St. Joseph minister in that same way throughout parishes and institutions in the United States. History repeating itself!

The center at Le Puy became very famous over the years for the work of the sisters, especially their work among needy children. Not only was that work carried by them throughout the French nation, it was also carried by the sisters to missionary nations.

In 1805, John Augustine Verot was born in Le Puy. He grew up knowing and admiring the work of the sisters in his hometown. He was ordained a priest in 1828 and the following year joined the Sulpician Fathers. In 1830 he was sent to the New World, to Baltimore to be a part of the new seminary which was training priests for the Americas. The seminary is still there, the famous St. Mary’s.

In 1858, Verot was named bishop with the title Vicar Apostolic of Florida. The new bishop went to the missionary territory and worked there till 1861 when he was named the third Bishop of Savannah. His territory now extended from the Tennessee state line to Key West, Florida. At no time during his ten years as bishop did Verot have more than 20 priests to cover over 100,000 square miles of territory.

That same year, 1861 saw the beginning of the Civil War. Verot’s territory became a battle zone and his service to both armies and his description of the horror and suffering he experienced makes interesting, if at times gruesome, reading. He and his few priests suffered very greatly as they ministered during that awful period of suffering, especially in the South.

In 1965, as Bishop Verot looked at the desolation around him and the needs of his post-war diocese, he thought about the work and the missionary spirit of the sisters in his native Le Puy. So Verot returned to France.

The Sisters of St. Joseph in Le Puy gladly listened to the returning missionary Bishop. He described the needs of his diocese and especially the apostolate to the newly freed black people. Verot was most interested in having the sisters serve the educational needs of the black community.

Eight sisters were chosen from the many volunteers. They immediately set sail for the New World. The eight landed in St. Augustine, Florida and began their work in 1866. Verot also returned to his diocese, but first of all went to Paris where he collected the body of his predecessor, the second bishop of Savannah, John Barry, who had died while obtaining medical treatment in Paris in 1859. Verot took the body back to Savannah and then to Augusta where it is buried.

Bishop John Barry became the second Bishop of Savannah in 1856. He was born in Ireland and as a seminarian came to Charleston to complete his studies. The great missionary Bishop John England ordained him around 1820. Most of Barry’s priesthood was spent in Augusta, Georgia. There he would become famous among people of all denominations for his pastoral work and especially his care of orphaned children.

In 1844, Father John Barry founded an orphanage in Augusta. The Augusta parish, at that time, included one third of the State of Georgia and parts of South Carolina as well. In 1853, Barry was appointed Vicar General of the new Diocese of Savannah (founded in 1850) by the first Bishop, Francis X. Gartland.

Gartland died in 1854 and Barry became administrator of the Savannah Diocese. He moved to the City of Savannah and moved the orphanage which he founded to that city also. When the Sisters of St. Joseph came from Le Puy and eventually arrived in Savannah at the invitation of Bishop Verot, they would immediately take charge of the Barry Male Orphanage. They would afterwards move that orphanage to Washington, Georgia, where it would be renamed the St. Joseph Orphanage. It remained in Washington until it was moved to Atlanta in 1967 when it would again be renamed the Village of St. Joseph.

So our present day Village, so well known to Atlanta Catholics, had its beginning in Augusta, Georgia in 1844 when Father John Barry founded a home for orphaned children.

Barry was bishop for merely two years. The Frenchman, Verot, was appointed third bishop in 1861. He was the one to bring the “Brench Sisters,” as they were called for years, to Georgia.

The first band of eight women in 1866 went to St. Augustine, Florida, which was then a part of the Savannah Diocese. In 1867, Bishop Verot asked the new sisters to make their first foundation and come to Savannah. They did. Three French sisters, along with two American candidates, who were not yet sisters, arrived in Savannah. They occupied a little house on Perry and Floyd Streets. There they began their work for children. As was noted above, they were given the care of the Barry Male Orphanage.

Towards the end of that same year, 1867, Mother M. Helen Gidon arrived. She was appointed Superior and became a most beloved and famous woman of her day in the Savannah community.

The French Sisters endured great hardships in the beginning. They found the humidity very difficult after leaving the mild French climate. The diet was also difficult for them. But bravely they began their work in the city of Savannah which was beginning to awake after the terrible war.

Along with the orphanage, they opened day schools for boys and girls. They also founded a day school for black children. In the evenings, the sisters would be found teaching black adults basic skills: reading, sewing, household management. Their work enlarged at a rapid pace.

In September 1869, Bishop Verot moved the sisters to larger quarters when he purchased the Scarborough House on West Broad Street. The orphanage was moved also. In December, Mother Helen died. The people of Savannah asked that this famous and popular woman be waked first in St. Patrick’s Church and then in the Cathedral in Savannah. She was buried in Savannah but later on would be taken to Washington, Georgia.

In 1870, Bishop Verot, like most bishops throughout the world, left to attend the First Vatican Council in Rome. He would not return to Savannah. A new bishop was appointed and Verot was sent to Florida. The new leader was Ignatius Persico.

Bishop Persico announced to the sisters, soon after he was appointed, that he wanted the Sisters of St. Joseph to be completely separated from the original foundation in Florida. He planned that they would now become a Diocesan Order, working only within the confines of the Diocese of Savannah. They would be called the Sisters of St. Joseph of Georgia.

After conferring with the sisters in Florida, it was agreed. Therefore, in March 1871, the diocesan community was established. For the next 51 years, the Church in Georgia would have its own religious community of women. Those women would write an unique chapter of history and give vibrant life to the growing church in Georgia.

Bishop Persico again asked the sisters to move in 1872. It was the old problem of space and growth. They moved their convent and their work to the Medical College in Savannah. There were six professed sisters and four novices at this time.

One year later, Persico was transferred and Bishop William Gross was appointed to Savannah. Gross announced to the Sisters that he would soon expect them to elect a superior general of the Order. Since they were a diocesan community, their headquarters would be here in the state. Therefore, a superior would have to be elected.

The election took place, but not until 1875. The six professed sisters elected one of the original French sisters, Sister Clemence Fraichon, as the first Superior General of the St. Joseph’s Sister of Georgia.

Their greatest growth was soon to take place but not before they were again moved. This time it would be a move of 150 miles to Washington, Georgia, a cotton town in the northwest part of the state. Today the city of Washington is within the confines of the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

(Continued next week)