Harriet Starr Cannon

Harriet Starr Cannon
Harriet Starr Cannon, CSM Mother Harriet Cannon, CSM
Mother
Born	May 7, 1823 Charleston, South Carolina
Died	March 29, 1896
Venerated in	Episcopal Church (USA)
Feast	7 May

Harriet Starr Cannon (May 7, 1823– March 29, 1896) founded the Sisterhood of St. Mary, one of the first orders of Augustinian nuns in the Anglican Communion and which remains dedicated to social service.

Early Life

Born in Charleston, South Carolina to a merchant family which traced its ancestry to Huguenots who fled France for New York in the 17th century, Harriet Starr was orphaned as a year old infant (with her three year old sister Catherine) when both their parents died of yellow fever. An aunt in Bridgeport, Connecticut took in and raised the girls. Harriet lost one eye in an accident, but was described as a "great society girl, and not at all religious." Her sister married and moved to California in 1851. Harriet planned to move there as well, but shortly before embarking in 1855, received word that Catherine had died.

Career

In 1856, Harriet Cannon moved to New York and joined the Sisterhood of the Holy Communion, an Episcopal order of deaconesses that British emigrant Anne Ayres had founded about a decade earlier. Assisting the poor in New York City under the auspices of Rev. William Augustus Muhlenberg and the Church of the Holy Communion, that new order of women who professed vows for three years at a time had recently helped found St. Luke's Hospital.

However, in 1863, conflicts with Ayres led Cannon to leave with four other sisters, and they established a new order, initially called the Sisters of St. Catherine. On February 2, 1865, Bishop Horatio Potter (1802-87) formally received Cannon, Jane Haight, Mary Heartt, Amelia Asten, and Sarah Bridge as the "Sisterhood of St. Mary". The new order (which now calls itself the Community of St. Mary (CSM) and follows a modified Benedictine rule) concentrated its efforts upon women, the homeless and orphans. By year's end it accepted its first novice.

In 1863 the new religious order took over the former Howland Mansion in what was then the rural tip of Manhattan Island, which had been turned into a home for "abandoned and troubled women" by Mrs. William Richmond (a rector's wife). By 1891, Cannon had overseen the building of a 200 room castle-like brick structure on the still-rural site (which street car lines would reach in 1906), and renamed it a "House of Mercy". Bishop Henry Codman Potter held an elaborate consecration service. Courts began assigning girls there, and families also brought their wayward daughters. The new structure, built to house 154 "fallen" women, had three divisions: the House of Mercy, St. Agnes’s House, and a division for penitents. However, iron gratings barred the windows, and persons assigned to one division were not allowed to mingle with those in other divisions. Controversies and scandals ensued, particularly after Mother Cannon's death, as discussed below.

The new religious order -- and the Oxford Movement generally -- attracted criticism within the Episcopal Church and society. Many condemned the garbed women religious as a throwback to popery and ritualism. However, the new order gained accolades in 1878, when four sisters (Constance, Thecla, Ruth, and Frances) died in Memphis, Tennessee along with two Episcopal priests (Rev. Charles Carroll Parsons and Rev. Louis S. Schuyler) while nursing victims of a yellow fever outbreak which killed 5,150 Memphians and caused the city to lose its charter due to depopulation. Mother Cannon had sent Sister Constance and several others to Memphis in 1871 at the invitation of Bishop Charles Quintard to establish a school for girls at that city's cathedral, as well as an orphanage. James De Koven delivered a eulogistic sermon based upon printed notes about their efforts before his death, as did the rector of St. John's Church across from the White House on the following All Saints Day.

Mother Cannon, renowned for her good humor, established a school as well as headquarters for the new community overlooking the Hudson River in Peekskill, New York in 1865. She lived there in a converted farmhouse with other CSM members for the last two decades of her life, although she also traveled extensively and established further facilities to serve women and children. Mother Cannon and her order became increasingly committed to education in addition to their medical work, particularly in providing free schools to educate women. During her lifetime and afterwards, the Community developed girls’ schools, hospitals, and orphanages in New York, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

Death and Legacy

Three weeks before her death, Mother Cannon traveled to New York City to check on St. Mary's Hospital and establish her last facility, a summer home for children in Norwalk, Connecticut overlooking a beach, as she had always been fond of the sea. She returned to the Peekskill motherhouse in good spirits, but fell gravely ill shortly after a retreat on Passion Sunday. She died about nones on Easter Day, 1896, surrounded by her community. She was buried in the convent cemetery in Peekskill.

Mother Cannon is remembered in the Episcopal Church's Calendar of saints on May 7. By 1981 the CSM nursing sisters who died in Memphis in 1878, as well as two priests who assisted them, received a liturgical commemoration on the church calendar for September 9, as the Martyrs of Memphis.

St. Mary's Hospital continues in Bayside, New York, now specializing in caring for children with special needs or life-limiting conditions.

Moreover, the Community of St. Mary survives to this day, in several locations. Built from stone quarried on the historic site overlooking the Hudson River in Peekskill, St. Gabriel's chapel was dedicated in 1893, a new convent for the motherhouse in 1905 and a new school building in 1911. However, the community left the Peekskill motherhouse in Westchester County in 2003 and moved to rural Greenwich, New York in Washington County, where they share a 620-acre facility within the Spiritual Life Center of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany, and even raise cashmere goats in addition to offering retreats. In 2008 the Community of St. Mary merged with the American branch of the Sisters of Charity, notwithstanding their slightly different religious rules. Similarly, the Memphis branch closed St. Mary's Preparatory School for Girls after the 1967-68 term, but now operates a retreat center near Sewanee, The University of the South. The CSM's western province continues to offer retreats at Mary's Margin in Mukwonago, Wisconsin. Since 2002, the order has another branch in Malawi as well as a mission at Sagada in the Philippines.

House of Mercy Controversy

The House of Mercy in Manhattan became more controversial after Mother Cannon's death. In August 1896, Laura Forman from Asbury Park, New Jersey brought a lawsuit, charging that while she was visiting her sister in New York, her father kidnapped and wrongfully committed her to the facility, where she was fed bread and molasses and occasionally gagged. Another sensational parental kidnapping case generated headlines in 1902. Still, the 1910 census counted 107 inmates at the House of Mercy, and listed its capacity as 110. Courts continued to sentence prostitutes to the facility, which trained them for domestic service, in part by operating a laundry. By 1912, most of the commitments were of victimized children, many previously abandoned to life on the streets. The Bureau of Social Hygiene reported that only four adult prostitutes were sent to the House of Mercy, but 57 girls had been sentenced to indefinite terms at the facility. However, funding had dried up, and by 1921, the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children leased the building while it built a permanent home on Fifth Avenue between 105th and 106th Streets. Children had previously been jailed with adults or at stationhouses pending judicial action. The following year, the average daily population was 152 and the average stay eight days.

The Society moved to Valhalla, New York, and sold the Manhattan property in sections to the City of New York between 1915 and 1926. By 1933 the structures had become decrepit, although a caretaker had moved in (with his family of 10 children). Squatters also moved in: some farming the grounds, others establishing a colony with houseboats on the Hudson River. The city government drove out the squatters and tore down the main building in 1933. The caretaker and his family moved out when his cottage collapsed on December 9, 1933. The property became Inwood Hill Park with the assistance of workers from the Works Progress Administration(WPA) during the Great Depression. By 1950 the park had been extended into the Hudson River.

Further reading

• Morgan Dix, Harriet Starr Cannon: First Mother Superior of the Sisterhood of St. Mary, 1896.
• Sister Mary Hilary CSM, Ten Decades of Praise: The Story of the Community of Saint Mary during Its First Century, Racine, Wisconsin, 1965.