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

Cannon was born in Charleston, South Carolina to stock broker William and Sally Hinman Cannon. The Cannons were a merchant family whose ancestors were wealthy Huguenots who fled France for New Netherlands about 1632 and were in New York City by 1693.

She was the younger sister of Catherine Ann who was born in 1821. On September 29 and 30, 1824 William and Ann Cannon, respectively, died of yellow fever. Seventeen-month-old Harriet Starr and her three-year-old sister Catherine were orphaned. Sally's brother-in-law, Captain James Allen had stopped in the port of Charleston about that time as part of his shipping trade. He found the girls and took them from a dangerous situation, brought them aboard his boat, and took them to their maternal aunt, Mrs. Fowler or Mrs. Hyde in Bridgeport, Connecticut where they were raised. The sisters had an especially close relationship became a member of her aunt's family and her five children. Harriet was described as cheerful, well-mannered, intelligent, and a proficient artist and musician. She taught music and art to children who were friends or relatives. During her childhood, Harriet lost one eye in an accident when she moved when her hair was being combed. She was confirmed in 1844 in New York church when visiting relatives. A relative, however, described as a "great society girl, and not at all religious."

Her sister married John Ruggles in 1851 and moved to California. The Hyde family moved to Milford, Connecticut and before that time Harriet moved to Brooklyn where she was in the Grace Church choir and taught music. According to arrangements made with her sister, Harriet planned to move to California, and began to say her good-byes to family members but shortly before embarking in 1855, she received word that Catherine had died. This "became the crisis of her life". She said of that time "I can look back to one period of my life when I scarcely knew whether the sun rose or the sun set; when for days there seemed to be no one in the world but myself." Forty years after her death Cannon still came to tears when she talked about her sister and stated that if Catherine had lived, she would not have become a sister and mother of the church.

Sisterhood of the Holy Communion

On March 6, 1856 Harriet Cannon became a probationer of the Episcopal order of deaconesses, Sisterhood of the Holy Communion, founded about a decade earlier by Anne Ayres. For the probationary three year period she was expected to provide her who financial support. Cannon was responsible for the care of seriously ill patients, including having been quarantined with victims of small pox disease. During this time, attending physician, Dr. William Augustus Muhlenberg said of a probationer that was thought might be Cannon:

...he found a young probationary Sister, rocking, as he lay wrapped in a blanket within her arms, a little boy, very ill with the loathsome disease. She was singing a hymn for him, and the poor child smiled as he looked up in her face and forgot his pain and restlessness. Dr. Muhlenberg came down from the ward enamored of the picture—'The very ideal of a Sister of Charity.'

— Sister Mary Hilary, CSM, Ten Decades of Praise

Dr. Muhlenberg had described the role of the deaconesses as women among "the centre around whom the others are to rally, carrying out her directions and deriving through her, in return, supplies, protection, and all needful provision for their comfort."

Assisting the poor in New York City under the auspices of Rev. William Augustus Muhlenberg and the Church of the Holy Communion, the order had recently helped found St. Luke's Hospital.

Community of St. Mary

In 1863, conflicts with Ayres led Cannon and four other sisters to leave and 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, now called the Community of St. Mary (CSM), followed a modified Benedictine rule. It concentrated its efforts upon women, the homeless and orphans. By year's end it accepted its first novice.

During her lifetime and afterwards, the Community developed girls’ schools, hospitals, and orphanages in New York, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

House of Mercy

In 1863 the new religious order took over the former Howland Mansion on what was then the rural tip of Manhattan. The mansion 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 and renamed it the "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. Iron gratings barred the windows, and persons assigned to one division were not allowed to mingle with those in other divisions. It better integrated with the rest of Manhattan when street car lines extended into the area in 1906.

Peekskill site

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. Cannon lived in a converted farmhouse in Peekskill with other CSM members for the last two decades of her life. During that time she traveled extensively and established additional facilities to serve women and children. Mother Cannon and her order focused on improving education, particularly by providing free schools for women, and continuing their medical care. Built from stone quarried on the historic site overlooking the Hudson River in Peekskill, St. Gabriel's chapel was dedicated in 1893.

Memphis, Tennessee

Mother Cannon had sent Sister Constance and several others to the Memphis city cathedral in 1871 at the invitation of Bishop Charles Quintard to establish a school for girls and an orphanage. The new order was recognized for its good work 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 yellow fever. The outbreak had resulted in the deaths of 5,150 Memphians and caused the city to lose its charter due to depopulation. A eulogistic sermon of their efforts was delivered on the following All Saints Day by James De Koven and the rector of St. John's Church of Washington, D.C.

Death and legacy

Three weeks before her death, Mother Cannon traveled to New York City to check on St. Mary's Hospital. Realizing her fondness for the sea, she establish her last facility, a summer home for children in Norwalk, Connecticut overlooking the beach. She returned to the Peekskill motherhouse in good spirits, but fell gravely ill shortly after a retreat on Passion Sunday. She died about noon 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.

Community of St. Mary after Cannon's death

The Community of St. Mary continued following Mother Cannon's death. In 2008 the Community of St. Mary merged with the American branch of the Sisters of Charity, notwithstanding their slightly different religious rules. The Sisters of Charity using one modeled upon that of St. Vincent de Paul, and the CSM rule having been written by Morgan Dix and founding Cowley Father Richard Meux Benson based on the Rule of St. Benedict.

Motherhouse

In Peekskill a new convent for the motherhouse in 1905 and a new school building in 1911. 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, where they raise cashmere goats and offer retreats.

Memphis

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.

St. Mary's Hospital, Bayside

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

House of Mercy

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.