Josephine Meagher: Immigrant. Orphan. Dominican. Founder.
Forged in displacement, suffering, and grief.
On this first day of Catholic Sisters Week—also International Women’s Day—we honor one of our founding sisters and celebrate her remarkable courage, which became the foundation and inspiration of more than 150 years of Dominican life.
Though details are incomplete, it seems that Josephine was born in Roscrea, County Tipperary, Ireland, about 1840, and emigrated to the United States with her widowed mother, Nellie Ryan Meagher, and several siblings (at least two, perhaps as many as five), arriving in the Port of New Orleans in the spring of 1853. The plan seems to have been for the family to relocate to Cincinnati to reside with Nellie’s sister. Nellie was sick during the voyage, however, and died shortly after reaching port, leaving 13-year-old Josephine, her sister Mary Ellen, 15, and their brother James, parentless.
The children were left “not entirely among strangers, but in a strange land.” There were Dominican missionary priests from both their mother’s and father’s families already in the U.S. It seems that her mother’s Dominican brother, Thomas Ryan, may have been in New Orleans already, or in any case, was quickly called. He collected his sister’s orphaned children—this much we know. Whether he deposited them immediately in Dominican schools in Kentucky, or took them to their aunt in Cincinnati as planned, we are unsure.
Records held in the archives of the Dominican Sisters of Peace indicate the girls, Josephine and Mary Ellen, entered the Dominican Sisters at St. Catherine convent, Kentucky on the same day, June 14, 1856, and were professed on September 12, 1858. Josephine retained her baptismal name, Mary Ellen took the name Clare, and later, Raymunda.
Eventually all three of the children became Dominicans, and Josephine, because of a communications snafu with the bishop of the Alton diocese, in advertently became one of the first six Kentucky Dominicans to be sent to Jacksonville, Illinois. One group of women had been assigned to Illinois, but after no further communication from the bishop, the prioress thought perhaps they were no longer needed and reassigned these sisters elsewhere.
Only when the Jacksonville pastor showed up at the motherhouse door in mid-August 1873, did they all realize the mistake. Quite hastily, five new sisters were assigned to the mission and within 72 hours were on their way to Jacksonville, Sister Josephine among them.
At the time, the sisters understood their assignment to be temporary. It was only when they were packing to return to Kentucky after their second year of teaching the children of mostly Irish, mostly immigrant railroad workers, that they discovered an agreement between the bishop and the superior in Kentucky that they were to start a new foundation.
The sisters’ living quarters were poorly ventilated, and in their second year of ministry the many in the community fell ill with spinal meningitis, Sister Josephine included. She seemed the sickest of all, falling into convulsions, then coma, and taking long months to recover.
Through six nonconsecutive terms as prioress of the community, Josephine led new foundation through multiple challenges—coping with their change of status, negotiating for the purchase of various residences in Jacksonville as the community grew in numbers, and, dealing with the hostile, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant environment in that city. We can only imagine that Sister Josephine among all the foundresses might have had a particular passion for this mission, serving children whose lives mirrored her own experience.
Her final responsibility as prioress, in her sixth term, was to oversee the purchase of the DuBois property, 20 acres of land on the western margins of Springfield, where the congregation remains to this day. The land was purchased in 1892 and occupied by the community in 1893.
Did Sister Josephine become a U.S. Citizen?
The short answer is, we don’t know. In our archives is an affidavit sworn in Hamilton County Court, Cincinnati, Ohio on July 27, 1892. Testifying are Denis Hogan and Michael O’Meara, who swear they have known Sister Josephine Meagher for 35 and 40 years, respectively, and that “they know she came to the United States while a minor.”
The affidavit was mailed to Sister Josephine at St. Rose Convent in Jacksonville by Mr. O’Meara, who included a newsy note and mentioned that he had recently seen Sister Josephine’s sister, Sister Raymunda, who “seemed to be quite well.”
What we can’t find is a certificate of naturalization, for which such an affidavit would have been required. In 1892 the laws of naturalization asked only that person have resided in the U.S. for five or more years and be of good moral character—that is unless the person was Chinese and, in that case, not allowed into the country under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892. The process of naturalization was the responsibility of county officials at the time, not the Federal government.
The first census record in which we find Sister Josephine is 1870, when she was residing at St. Catharine of Sienna Convent in Sienna Vale, Kentucky. In that census, only men were required to indicate whether they were citizens. The next time she appears is the 1910 census, living with 122 other sisters in the motherhouse she shepherded into being 17 years earlier. During that census year citizenship questions were two-fold: What year did you emigrate and were you “naturalized or alien.” While 26 of the sisters were listed as having been born outside the United States, the census enumerator seemed to find it unimportant to inquire about the sisters’ status. Those two questions are blank in every instance.
This leaves many questions. Sister Josephine arrived in the Port of New Orleans about 1853. Why was it almost 40 years later before she sought the affidavit attesting that she had been present in the US longer than five years? Had she been naturalized earlier? Was that proof missing, thus requiring verification? Or was she only now seeking naturalization because it seemed necessary?
We can only speculate. One possibility is that Sister Josephine needed proof of citizenship in order to receive the deed to the property the community purchased in Springfield. What kind of anxieties did this create for Sister Josephine and for all the sisters? How might they have speculated about the outcome and begun to strategize other plans?
Given the challenges facing immigrants today, it is instructive to reflect on the experiences of our founding sisters., and to recognize the challenges and disruptions that immigration and naturalization policy has often caused.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/record/results?count=100&q.anyDate.from=1853&q.anyDate.to=1925&q.birthLikeDate.from=1836&q.birthLikeDate.to=1840&q.birthLikePlace=Roscrea%2C%20County%20Tipperary%2C%20Ireland&q.givenName=Josephine&q.recordCountry=United%20States&q.surname=Meagher&c.sex=on&f.sex=female
