Philippine Duchesne has a message for today's world in which the rich seem to be growing richer and the poor to be growing poorer. It is a message of justice and love for all people. It was for this conviction that Philippine, a Religious of the Sacred Heart missionary, became the fourth United States saint in 1988. This book is a bold historical biography of a remarkable woman who struggled her entire life to enflesh God's love and care in human situations. It opens with a critical discussion and forthright examination of how class, gender, and race have been influential factors in the selection of saints, and then details Philippine's life with its many failures and many achievements. It shows how this wealthy woman who belonged to a politically prominent French family decided to dedicate her life and gifts to the poor. It examines her difficulties as Sacred Heart's first missionary in the new world and it tells how this courageous pioneer woman provided free education for those who had long been denied the privilege--young women, the poor, and native Americans. This eminently readable biography provides a clear and scholarly assessment of Duchesne's religious and social world that is ideal for students and professors of U.S. church history. It raises important questions about women, the poor, and marginalized groups in Duchesne's time that are still pertinent to ask today.

This new addition to the popular guidebook series explores women's experiences and the impact of their activities on the history and landscape of St. Louis. When the city was founded, most St. Louisans believed that "a woman's place is in the home," in the house of her father, husband, or master. Over the years, women pushed out the boundaries of their lives into the public arena, and in doing so they changed the face of St. Louis. In Her Place is a guide to the changing definition of a woman's place in St. Louis, beginning with the colonial period and ending with the 1960s. Each chapter explores the experiences of women during a specific time period and identifies the sites of some of their public activities on a map of the city created from historical sources. Along the way, readers will meet such significant St. Louis women as Harriet Scott, Susan Blow, Edna Gellhorn, and Philippine Duchesne and learn about the activities of the Ladies' Union Aid Society, the Sisters of Charity, the League of Women Voters, and the Harper Married Ladies' Club. The book also includes four tours of the St. Louis region addressing the themes of the book and identifying significant buildings, homes, and other key sites. Current photographs will help readers locate the sites on detailed maps. An up-to-date bibliography and resource listing make this an invaluable guide for anyone interested in studying the history of women in the region.

Saint Philippine Duchesne and four religious companions of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus came from France to Louisiana in 1818 with the express desire of working among Native Americans to bring them knowledge of the love of Jesus Christ for them. After many years of educating the children of European settlers, Philippine finally realized her dream when she was sent to an encampment of the Potawatomi at Sugar Creek, Kansas. Her time among them was limited to one year; however, her sisters, the Religious of the Sacred Heart, continued to work among the Potawatomi for thirty-eight more years. This book is a carefully researched account of the life and work of these sisters among the Native Americans, the difficulties of adaptation of European women to frontier conditions, and the movement across Kansas with their people as the Potawatomi were pushed westward. Although the life of Saint Philippine has been studied extensively, until Maureen Chicoine undertook the research for this book, no complete account of the mission of the Society of the Sacred Heart to the Potawatomi existed. The book will shed light on a little known apostolic ministry of the Society in America in the nineteenth century.

Complementing the new permanent exhibition at the Missouri Historical Society, this anthology gathers over three centuries of writings on St. Louis by 100 individuals who have been inspired to describe the physical and cultural essence of this region. The volume contains excerpted selections from all genres--travel diaries, poetry, fiction, journalism, drama, and rare out-of-print and previously unpublished archival material--including poems by Angus Umphraville, from the first volume of verse published west of the Mississippi, and newspaper articles by Theodore Dreiser when he was a beat reporter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Other compelling excerpts were authored by such notables as Auguste Chouteau, Charles Dickens, William Wells Brown, William T. Sherman, Sara Teasdale, T. S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, Fanny Hurst, William S. Burroughs, Miles Davis, Nzotake Shange, John Lutz, Carl Phillips, and Quincy Troupe. A biographical introduction precedes each entry to place the author and the excerpt in the proper historical context. The content of Seeking St. Louis was enriched by the involvement of several of the St. Louis area's foremost literary experts--Robert Boyd, Jan Garden Castro, Gerald Early, Wayne Fields, and Karen Goering--who served as contributing editors.

45 saints, beati, and other holy people of the past 200 years, and their pictures; most are actual photographs. Includes the Cure of Ars, St. Catherine Laboure, St. Therese the Little Flower, St. Pius X, Vens. Jacinta and Francisco Marto, Dom Columba Marmion, St. Elizabeth Seton, Pauline Jaricot, Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity, Sr. Josefa Menendez, St. Joseph Cafasso, Therese Neumann, and many more. Shows there are people living today who will one day be canonized Saints.

What drove U.S. Catholics in their arduous quest, full of twists and turns over more than a century, to win an American saint? The absence of American names in the canon of the saints had left many of the faithful feeling spiritually unmoored. But while canonization may be fundamentally about holiness, it is never only about holiness, reveals Kathleen Sprows Cummings in this panoramic, passionate chronicle of American sanctity. Catholics had another reason for petitioning the Vatican to acknowledge an American holy hero. A home-grown saint would serve as a mediator between heaven and earth, yes, but also between Catholicism and American culture. Throughout much of U.S. history, the making of a saint was also about the ways in which the members of a minority religious group defined, defended, and celebrated their identities as Americans. Their fascinatingly diverse causes for canonization—from Kateri Tekakwitha and Elizabeth Ann Seton to many others that are failed, forgotten, or still under way—represented evolving national values as Catholics made themselves at home. Cummings's vision of American sanctity shows just how much Catholics had at stake in cultivating devotion to men and women perched at the nexus of holiness and American history—until they finally felt little need to prove that they belonged.

Provides the journal entries, diaries, memoirs, and letters of over twenty women living in Missouri from the years 1820 to 1920. Also includes a brief history and background of each woman and her work.

Heroic Hearts examines how young women in nineteenth-century France, authorized by a widespread cultural discourse that privileged individual authority over domesticity and marriage, sought to change the world. Jennifer J. Popiel offers a recuperative reading of sentimental authority, especially in its relationship to religious vocabulary. Heroic Hearts uncovers the ways sentimental appeals authorized women to trust themselves as modern actors for a project of cultural restoration. With their emphasis on sacrifice and heroism, these cultural currents offered liberatory potential. Heroic Hearts examines not only general cultural currents but their adoption by particular women, each of whom was privileged with access to money and social influence. The words of three extraordinary women, Philippine Duchesne, Pauline Jaricot, and Zélie Martin, offer powerful testimony to their agency. These women's rejection of "traditional" domesticity, believed to be a formative influence for their class, demonstrates how women understood the imperative to change the world outside of their natural families. Their writings, which demonstrate the appeal of sentimental virtue, show us how women's public lives could exist not in opposition to prevailing religious and social ideals but because of them.