Catholic fundraisers part of frontier life

Palatka in earlier days. Photo credit:
Palatka Railroad Preservation Society

Church and parochial school fundraisers are and were a staple of Catholic life. In Florida, that was as true a century ago as it is today.

On superficial levels, the fundraisers on the Florida frontier were different. For example, in 1911 a benefit performance for the Sisters of St. Joseph in Palatka featured musical performances. But, oh, how the music has changed. 

The event was written up in The Palatka News on June 30, 1911, and given the headline "Benefit A Big Success." The benefit netted $44.25 in 1911 dollars. That's almost $1,200 today. 

That's not too shabby, when you consider certain facts. Tickets cost only 10 cents, about $2.75 today. The event took place in a Florida summer in the days before air conditioning. Can you say sweltering? And the city's population at that time was only about 3,800 people. Finally, anti-Catholicism was rearing its head in Florida in 1911.

The news reporter was impressed by the event's proceeds, the size of the crowd, and the artists who performed. Most were "well known local artists." They treated the audience to violin solos, piano music, and vocal and spoken performances. The setting was nice, too - a local theater named the Orpheum.

The songs named were mysteries to me: "Sergeant Kitty," "Listening to the Vesper Bells," "Pheenie," "You Give Me Your Love." The audience loved the Vesper Bells song so much they gave singer Mrs. Louis Kalkfield an encore. I wish I knew her first name. Married women in those days were identified in public by their husband's names. 

The fundraiser also featured a "special picture of incidents in the life of Christ." No other explanation is given. It made me wonder if the picture depicted the Stations of the Cross.  A Catholic news reporter would have said as much, but a non-Catholic reporter might not have known that.

All in all, the event seems to have been a high point in town on a quiet summer day in 1911. 

The Sisters of St. Joseph operated an academy in Palatka for decades. The school was still popular enough in 1922 that The Palatka News found it necessary to squash rumors that the academy was closing. The May 24, 1922 edition placed a prominent notice on Page 2, just above an etching and tidbit about the inventor of the Eskimo Pie.

The Sisters, though, got the largest headline on the page: "St. Joseph's Will Not Close School." The notice said the Sisters of St. Joseph's Academy wished to correct a rumor that the school wouldn't open for the fall semester. There was no foundation to the rumor and the Sisters were at a loss to determine how it got started.

My cynical side suspects the rumor started in the anti-Catholicism that had become prevalent in Florida by the early 1920s. But, as with the original rumor, I have no foundation for my musings. Just general knowledge of the political and religious climates of that time in Florida.

The Sisters of St. Joseph had a deep footprint in Palatka by 1922. They had opened their school in the riverfront city in 1876. I learned that from a 2008 dissertation by Barbara E. Mattick that's accessible online via the Florida State University Digital Library. The doctoral disseration covers the ministries of the Catholic Sisters of St. Augustine over the course of 61 years. I look forward to reading more of its 226 pages.

St. Joseph's Academy lasted a few years beyond the rumor days. A 2001 article in The Orlando Sentinel said the academy was replaced by a parish school named St. James in 1929.

Many Catholic schools struggle to stay open today. They and our Catholic churches need our support more than ever. May the next fundraiser you attend, in person or online, be filled with beautiful music and open hearts. 

Sr. Clotilde a woman for our times

Sister Clotilde forged a firm path in the first half of the
20th century. She is remembered for her commitment to
 Christ and to the students she taught. (Photo credit:
Sisters of Saint Joseph, St. Augustine - July 2017 archive)

Finding online archival information on religious sisters who served in pioneer Florida can be challenging. So when resources readily popped up about Sister Anna Clotilde Kohler, SSJ, I took it as a sign from above. I even found two photos of her.

Granted, Sr. Clotilde, as she was known, died in modern times - 1962. She was in her 80s. But she'd spent 65 years as a Sister of St. Joseph in Florida. She dedicated almost 50 of those years to educating African-American children in Ybor City and Fernandina. Segregation was the law for all of those years. Anti-Catholicism was pretty strong for most of the era, too.

But politics and bigotry don't surface in the records I found about Sr. Clotilde. Instead, I learned of her religiosity, steadfastness, and strong personality. The expression on her face in the SSJ photo, shown with this post, speaks of an individuality that religious orders of the time tried to squash. Strength is also seen in an Amelia Island Museum of History photo of her in the 1950s, when she was in Fernandina.

Could a strong will and individualism be why Sr. Clotilde kept being reassigned during her early years? We'll never know. That isn't in the public record. But there are hints that this woman forged her own way when possible.

Sr. Clotilde was born in St. Augustine and donned her religious habit in 1896. That's when she took the name Anna Clotilde. Her birth name was Mary Elizabeth, according to the Sisters of Saint Joseph in St. Augustine. (Click on the SSJ's July 2017 newsletter archive to see where I found that detail and the photo.) In 1901, she landed in Ybor City. That was after she'd already had seven assignments! She soon moved on, again. In 1903, she was sent to St. Benedict the Moor parish school. And there she stayed for more than 40 years.

Michael J. McNally, author of Catholic Parish Life on Florida's West Coast, 1860-1968, cites Sr. Clotilde as "one of the most outstanding mentors of St. Benedict School..." (page 192). He also says she was remembered more for her "commitment to Christ and her students" than for her teaching abilities (192). The SSJ archive, however, says she was known for her teaching. Another source calls her an admired teacher and "a stabilizing influence in the black community" (Jane Quinn, "Nuns in Ybor City: The Sisters of St. Joseph and the Immigrant Community," Tampa Bay History, Spring/Summer 1983).

The sources agree on examples of her dedication. She:

• every fourth Sunday, led students in a song-filled procession to special pews in church for an integrated Mass
• formed a St. Joseph Society (boys) and St. Cecilia Society (girls) to help youth grow in Catholic piety
• built a stage for students and helped them perform dramatic and musical events

Quinn's article says Sr. Clotilde maintained correspondence with many former pupils after she was transferred to St. Peter Claver School in Fernandina. It'd be great to read some of those letters, for they surely reveal more of her personality and shed light on what made her special enough for multiple remembrances. 

McNally, on page 193, posits that her humanity grew from suffering she went through. He writes that, early in her religious life, she was accused of having "a particular friendship." In Catholic religious life, that is a code phrase for a same-sex relationship or attraction. It was a serious accusation and resulted in her being hauled before the bishop. After the bishop heard St. Clotilde's side of the story, he deemed the accusation false.

"This experience of being unjustly accused deepened her human compassion and spiritual life, as she herself later admitted," McNally writes. Along with Sr. Clotilde's letters, I'd like to read any other writings she left behind - especially the memoir the SSJ archive mentions. As McNally says, Sr. Clotilde "had a certain independence of character which many admired" (193).  She was also moral, dedicated to others, and committed to Christ. The kind of leader we are so in need of today.

Hands across religions

As a child in the 1960s, I thought all people were either Catholic or Jewish. There was little evidence of other faith traditions in my New York City environs. When I moved to Central Florida in early adulthood, the known world appeared to be entirely Southern Baptist.

Those perceptions of were based partly on superficial observation of the surroundings as I went about my life. Yet it was true that the people in these - and probably other - faith traditions carved geographical niches at the time.

Sisters of St. Joseph at Cape Florida Lighthouse,
as shown in the book Miami 1909.
(Photo credit in book: Charles Mann / Miami Pioneers)

Our postmodern world has moved beyond denominational dominance in most areas of the United States. Interdenominational initiatives are a norm. What intrigues me is how my research on the social history of pioneer Catholicism in Florida continues to unearth similar modernist behavior. I keep finding exceptions in what I previously considered an era of isolationism among faith traditions.

As noted in other blog posts, those circles of friendships may be due to human needs on a sparsely populated frontier. But Miami wasn't exactly a backwoods settlement in 1909. Wikipedia cites the U.S. Census for the 1910 population count of 5,471. Yet 1909 Miami is when my latest example of religious intermingling occurs.

The 1984 book, Miami 1909, by Thelma Peters, (Banyan Books), is built around the diary Miami resident Fannie Clemons wrote that year. Peters, herself a Miami pioneer and a former president of the Florida Historical Society, established a rich sense of place in which to situate the diary excerpts. One of the places Peters mentions is St. Catherine's Convent School. In the photo caption for the picture of the school on Page 35, she says the following:

Some non-Catholic children were sent here because the sisters had a reputation for gentility and thoroughness.

I like the sound of that, having been the product of similar teachers at St. Brigid's in Brooklyn.

The Miami convent school was just east of the Church of the Holy Name, built in 1898 on grounds of what is today Gesu Church. The original, small wooden church was built on land donated by Henry Flagler, who I believe was Presbyterian. Peters relays an anecdote in which Flagler, at the time, said that "two institutions that never failed to do what they started out to do were the Standard Oil Company and the Catholic Church."

Flagler was busy extending his Florida East Coast Railway to Key West in 1909. Two of his business associates founded St. Catherine's school, which in 1909 was staffed by six Sisters of St. Joseph from New York, Florida, Ohio, and Ireland. Pupils that season closed the school year with a program that included the following:

• music by the school's music club, the St. Cecelia Club
• piano solos
• readings
• awarding of medals of excellence

And, we're sure, some heartfelt prayers.