A Washington, D.C. resident, Casey traveled and lectured widely. The collection reflects her interests in anthropology and archeology; it consists mainly of postcards, photographs, cards, clippings, and pamphlets relating to Native American culture in the American Southwest. Also present are postcards from Mexico, Guatemala, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, the Belgian Congo (Zaire), Uganda, Kenya, Zanzibar, Rhodesia, and South Africa, and several articles and photographs relating to Catholic missions in California.
An online is not available for this collection. Please contact the archives.
A finding aid for the records of the Catholic Daughters of the Americas (CDA).
The Catholic Daughters of the Americas is a charitable organization of women; it was founded in 1903 by the Knights of Columbus in Utica, New York. Originally known as the Daughters of Isabella, it was renamed the Catholic Daughters of America in 1921, but, since 1978, has been known as the Catholic Daughters of the Americas. The Catholic Daughters have worked with physically and mentally handicapped children and orphanages, served in veteran's hospitals and homes for the aged, helped with immigrants and foreign visitors, and have provided scholarships and disaster relief.
This initial deposit of material reflects nearly a century of the history and activities of the Catholic Daughters. Records include national board and convention minutes, constitutions and by-laws, disbanded court charters and books, correspondence, legal files, statistical reports, photographs, and reel to reel films. In addition, there are record copies of the official publications: The Herald (1904-1930), Women's Voice (1930-1948), News and Views (1952-1966), and Share (1970 to the present).
Established in 1913, the DC Court of the Catholic Daughters of the Americas (CDA), number 212, is the oldest of its kind. Records on deposit include administrative files, 1913-1990; convention scrapbook, 1978; cloth banners of the DC Court, n.d.; and a paper blessing, 1998.
An online is not available for this collection. Please contact the archives.
A finding aid to the records of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA).
Formed in 1946 at a meeting in New York City, the society is a professional organization of both Catholic and non-Catholic clergy, religious, and lay men and women including professors, teachers, and scholars that meets every June at an annual convention. Its purpose is to promote education and scholarship in relation to current problems by providing a forum to further the cause of unity among Christians and all people through a better understanding and appreciation of the role of critical religious faith in church and society.
Archival material encompasses correspondence and reports, minutes and proceedings, publications and photographs, financial and membership records generated by the Board of Directors, Executive officers, sundry committees, annual conventions, and regional meetings.
A finding aid to the Christ Child Society, Inc. records.
The Records of the Christ Child Society document the activities of the Catholic welfare organization whose stated mission is "to meet the material, educational, and emotional needs of children in the Washington, D.C area."
The Christ Child Society was founded in 1887 by Mary Virginia Merrick (1866-1955). At the time, "the only other Catholic charitable organization in [Washington, D.C.] was a small St. Vincent de Paul Society. [...] The Christ Child Society was chartered in 1903 and began its national expansion. Today there are 38 chapters spread across the country... " (quoted from https://www.christchilddc.org/page.cfm?p=506).
The records shed light upon the history of philanthropy in general (e.g., the settlement movement, ca. 1880-1920) and the role of women within it. Because of the extent of the Washington Chapter records, they provide rich insight into not only charity work but also aspects of Washington, D.C. society—including the administration of relief, the Italian community and its Americanization, segregation, and the activities of youth.
The Christ Child Society (CCS) Records consist of three record groups: the personal papers of Mary Virginia Merrick (1880-1955); the records of the Washington Chapter (1890-1982); and the records of the national organization (1905-1982; bulk: 1948-1982). The organizational papers of the Washington Chapter include correspondence, writings, minutes, financial publications, articles, clippings, scrapbooks, and photographs for the chapter's Board of Directors, departments, and committees. The papers of the National Christ Child Society include records of its conventions, the correspondence of its presidents, and reports of the chapters.
A finding aid for the records of the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa in America.
Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity was founded in 1948 to work to alleviate the abject poverty of the poor of Calcutta, India. Influenced and inspired by this, the American Co-Workers were inaugurated in New York City in 1971 as an affiliate to the Missionaries. Representatives from four states and Washington, D.C. were present. Mrs. Warren Kump was named National Chairman and Vi Collins, one of Mother Teresa's original Co-Workers in Calcutta, was named Chairman of the Washington area. Membership was ecumenical and efforts focused on administering to the poor in areas where the Missionaries of Charity were not present.
The records at CUA document Vi Collins's service as Regional Link, National Link, and International Speaker/Councilor of the Co-Workers to the Missionaries of Charity. The records consist of correspondence, notebooks, the Co-Worker Newsletter, newspaper clippings, photographs, and audio tapes and cassettes accumulated during Collins's forty-year association with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity. See a related blog post.
A finding aid to the records of the Daughters of Isabella.
The Daughters of Isabella was founded in 1897 as a female auxiliary to the Knights of Columbus. Today, it is one of the largest Catholic women's organizations, with a membership of over 60,000 women from the United States and Canada.
The records include foundation documents, 1903-1925; legal and court proceedings, 1982, n.d.; Board of Directors' minutes, 1906-1987; convention minutes, workbooks, programs, 1911-2004; subject envelopes/files, ca. 1910s-1990s; publications, 1938-1992; English Constitutions, 1907-1994; French Constitutions, 1941-1984; 'English Ceremonials,' 1926-1996; 'French Ceremonials,' 1941-1983, n.d.; photographs, slides, and scrapbooks, n.d.; financial records, 1905-1986; disbanded circle records, n.d.; and artifacts, including badges, pennants, garments, n.d.
Born in Washington, D.C., Anna Hanson McKenney Dorsey (1815-1896) was a nineteenth-century novelist and Catholic convert. Her work earned her two special blessings from Pope Leo XIII as well as the University of Notre Dame's prestigious Laetare Medal.
The papers consist of two handwritten copies of text; the copies were made by the mother of the donor (Helen Lorraine) who is believed to be a distant relative of Dorsey.
The first is a handwritten copy of a newspaper article about Dorsey from the Philadelphia Sunday Times (ca. 1896). The article, written by Gilberta S. Whittle, describes Dorsey's genealogy (her ancestors were prominent Maryland colonists) and literary works.
The second is a handwritten copy of an 1882 letter from Dorsey to Josephine Ridue, offering details about Dorsey's family history.
An online is not available for this collection. Please contact the archives.
Tatiana Zurunitch Fotitch (1900-1972) taught in The Catholic University of America's (CUA) romance language department beginning in 1947; she earned her Ph.D. from CUA in 1950 and retired in 1970 as Professor Emerita. Dr. Fotitch also served as Director of the Graduate School's interdepartmental program in Comparative Literature.
The papers relate mainly to Fotitch's textbook, An Anthology of Old Spanish (1961). Included are draft sections of the book, and photostats of texts used in it to illustrate the development of the Spanish language through the end of the fifteenth century. Also present are programs and correspondence concerning the 1959 and 1960 Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
Born in Austria, Fotitch married Constantin Fotitch, who was Yugoslavian ambassador to the United States from 1935 to 1944.
An online is not available for this collection. Please contact the archives.
A finding aid to the Mary Ann Glendon Papers.
Mary Ann Glendon (1938- ) is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University and a former United States Ambassador to the Holy See. One of the few archival collections at The Catholic University of America (CUA) documenting the career of an individual Catholic laywoman, the Mary Ann Glendon Papers consist of correspondence, speeches, publications, notes, newspaper clippings, photographs, awards, and memorabilia.
See related blog post.
A finding aid to the Haynes-Lofton Family Papers.
The Haynes-Lofton Family Papers include the personal papers of Catholic University of America (CUA) alumna Euphemia Lofton Haynes, her husband Harold Appo Haynes, and their families.
Euphemia Lofton Haynes earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics from CUA in 1943, becoming the first African-American woman in the United States ever to receive a doctoral degree in mathematics. Her dissertation: Determination of Sets of Independent Conditions Characterizing Certain Special Cases of Symmetric Correspondences.
She taught in the public schools of Washington, D.C. for 47 years and was the first woman to chair the D.C. School Board. She figured prominently in the integration of the D.C. public schools and also of the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women.
The papers consist of correspondence, financial records, publications, speeches, reports, newspaper clippings, and photographs; they provide a record of her professional and social life, including her involvement in education, civic affairs, real estate, and business matters in Washington, D.C.
See a related blog post.
Margaret Hickey attended Clifton, a Catholic women's service school in Washington, D.C., that eventually became part of the Catholic University School of Social Service. The papers consist of a 1917 letter to Hickey from Father Leo C. McVay of Catholic University and two 1921 issues of Clifton Spirit, a school newsletter that includes alumni information.
An online is not available for this collection. Please contact the archives.
Sister M. Inez, O.S.B., then-teacher at St. Benedict’s College in St. Joseph, Minnesota, was the first woman to be officially admitted as a student to regular classes at The Catholic University of America (CUA). She enrolled in September 1924.
The correspondence consists mainly of replies from various Catholic universities to Sister Inez’s requests for curriculum information. The letters illustrate the dearth of Catholic graduate education available to women at the time.
An online is not available for this collection. Please contact the archives.
A finding aid for the collection of the International Federation of Catholic Alumnae (IFCA).
Founded in 1914, the International Federation of Catholic Alumnae (IFCA) promoted the educational activities of teacher-Sisters. The IFCA hoped to be an example of integrity, culture, and charity to help rid the country of bigotry. They established several departments to accomplish their goals: the Motion Picture, Social Welfare, and Education Departments among others.
Records include constitutions and bylaws, convention proceedings, board of directors minutes, correspondence, reports, financial records, chapter histories, photographs, publications, scrapbooks, audio tapes, and some artifacts.
A finding aid to the Mary Harris "Mother" Jones collection.
Born sometime in the 1830s in Cork, Ireland, Mary Harris Jones—better known as Mother Jones—was an active participant in the labor movement in the United States for nearly 60 years. Up to the time of her death on November 30, 1930 in Maryland, she spoke out against labor injustice and for the protection of "her boys." She is buried in the United Mine Workers Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois.
The Mother Jones collection contains correspondence, telegrams, newspaper clippings, and other published materials associated with Jones' time as labor activist.
Born Alodie Virginia Paradis in Nova Scotia in 1840, Mother Marie Lionie (her religious name) founded the Little Sisters of the Holy Family in 1880. The Little Sisters provided domestic help for the clergy, devoting themselves to work in the kitchens, laundries, and sacristies of colleges, seminaries, and episcopal residences.
The subject of the 8x10 inch photo is the 1912 funeral of Mother Lionie.
An online is not available for this collection. Please contact the archives.
A finding aid to the Clare Boothe Luce Theatre Collection.
Clare Boothe Luce (otherwise known as Ann Clare Boothe) (1903-1987) was a playwright, politician, and Catholic convert. Her husband was Henry R. Luce, the publisher of Time and Life magazines.
After the untimely death of her nineteen-year-old daughter, Luce turned to Bishop Fulton Sheen for spiritual advice. Her writing energies after her conversion to Roman Catholicism focused on the spiritual life.
The Theatre Collection consists of notebooks and scrapbooks collected and compiled by Clare Boothe Luce. These contain announcements, programs, and review clippings from musical (including both classical and popular music) and theatrical life in the United States from 1891 to 1919.
Antoinette Margot (1843-1925) was born in Lyons, France, and baptized as a member of the Swiss Evangelical Free Church. Believing she experienced several miracles, she ultimately converted to Catholicism. She developed a friendship with Clara Barton, who founded the Red Cross, and in 1886 moved to Washington where she shared a house with Barton. That same year, she befriended Leonide Delarue who in 1884 inspired Mary Merrick to found the Christ Child Society. By 1887, Margot moved in with Delarue. Four years later, they moved into Theodoron “God’s Gift,” a house built by Delarue and Margot. On September 19, 1861 Msgr. James F. Mackin of St. Paul’s Parish offered the first mass at Theodoron which marked the beginning of St. Anthony’s Parish in Brookland. Delarue and Margot turned this residence over to the parish and moved into Villa Marie (12th Street, NE) where Margot lived until her death in 1925. Henri Hyvernat, CUA professor of Semitics, was the executor of her estate.
The Margot papers has photographs, mostly undated, of friends and other individuals, several sites within Washington, D.C., and of religious paintings. The estate files, 1922-1928, are titled Bills Paid, Books, CUA, Correspondence-Family, Correspondence-Friends, Dyer, L.F., Estate Furniture, Hamilton and Hamilton and Family, House, Instructions, Inventory, Lyonnais Stock, Miscellaneous, Press-Biography, and Will, and are located in box 2. There are also oversize maps of European cities (1831-1926) and of Washington, D.C. (1887-1926).
Note: There is no for this collection
A finding aid to the papers of Margaret Richards Millar.
Margaret Richards Millar (1858-1947) was a Catholic convert best known for heading the “Women Workers” sent to France during WWI by the newly-formed National Catholic War Council (NCWC). Millar also helped organize the first conference of the National Council of Catholic Women (NCCW), held in 1920.
Her papers include correspondence, clippings, a diary, photographs, and memorabilia related to her war work.
For more details, check out this blog post.
A finding aid for the collection of Eileen Egan on Mother Teresa.
This collection of Mother Teresa material was gathered over the years by Eileen Egan, author of the Christopher Award winning biography, Such a Vision of the Street: Mother Teresa, The Spirit and the Work (1985). Egan served for many years in the Indian Affairs division of Catholic Relief Services (CRS). She also assisted the National Council of Catholic Women (NCCW) in its overseas efforts and edited the international newsletter of the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa.
The collection contains correspondence from Mother Teresa, audio cassettes of her lectures, press releases and newspaper clippings, photographs, and numerous books. Many of the latter are in Spanish, German, Dutch, and French. Of special interest are the compiled newsletters of both the international and American Co-Workers of Mother Teresa.
See related blog post.
A finding aid to the records of the National Conference of Catholic Charities/Catholic Charities USA.
An influx of Catholic immigrants in the early nineteenth century prompted parishes in the ethnic neighborhoods of the country's burgeoning cities to become centers of spiritual activities and charitable works. Early endeavors of the National Conference of Catholic Charities (NCCC) included the organization of Catholic Charities at the diocesan level, the establishment of Catholic schools of social work, and the formal integration of social institutions managed by religious sisters. The name was changed in 1986 to Catholic Charities USA to demonstrate that the organization—now a centralized and professional network of over 600 agencies and affiliated institutions—was still dedicated to service.
Offering valuable insight into the national Catholic commitment to social thought and activism over the last century, the records consist of correspondence, minutes of the board of directors, committee and legislative files, surveys and studies, photographs and publications.
See related blog post.
A finding aid to the records of the Office of the General Secretary.
The National Council of Catholic Nurses (NCCN) was formally organized in Chicago on June 10, 1940 under the direction of the Episcopal Chairman for the Lay Organizations Department. The mission of the NCCN was to inculcate Christian principles in the field of health and nursing. Its official publication was the quarterly The Catholic Nurse.
Although there are no records of NCCN on deposit with the CUA Archives, those interested in its operations can consult three general subject files and annual reports for the NCCN in the wider records of the Office of the General Secretary/Executive Department of the United States Catholic Conference, 1938-1966.
A finding aid to the records of the National Council of Catholic Women.
Established in 1920 as part of the Lay Organizations Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), the National Council of Catholic Women (NCCW) was a breakthrough for Catholic lay women. NCCW has operated as a federation of Catholic women's organization under an Executive Director and a Board of Directors. The most noteworthy of its numerous publications is the monthly magazine Catholic Woman. In its early days, the NCCW managed the National Catholic School of Social Service (NCSSS), 1921-1947, for women, prior to its merger with the School of Social Work, for men, at The Catholic University of America. A noted and long-time executive director, 1948-1977, was Margaret Mealey.
Records consist of Board of Directors' minutes and related material, 1920-1985; convention and assembly proceedings, 1920-1996; executive director's correspondence, 1990-1996; diocesan affiliate card files, ca. 1940s-1960s; conference and institute minutes, 1937-1971; Home and School Association, 1951-1969; national and international membership records, 1920-1975; photographs, 1920-1970; general publications, 1920-1998, including Catholic Woman, 1975-1997; and mixed media material, ca. 1940s-1998, including reel to reel audio tapes, ca. 1960s-1971, and audio cassettes, 1975-1997.
The manuscripts consist mainly of correspondence of Mary and Patrick O'Farrell. Patrick O'Farrell was a Washington, D.C. lawyer who served in the Union army during the Civil War. Notable items include
An online is not available for this collection. Please contact the archives.
The Book of Customs is a handwritten volume signed by Bishop John J. Conroy of Albany, 1869, containing interpretations and exemplifications of the Religious Sisters of Mercy's Rule (i.e., the code of regulations governing all facets of their religious life). It comes from the Convent of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady of Mercy, Greenbush (now Rensselaer), New York.
An online is not available for this collection. Please contact the archives.
A Washington, D.C. resident, Mary Ryan was the wife of Daniel Joseph Ryan—who at one time headed the Bureau of Historical Records of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC). Her papers include personal correspondence from family and friends, school reports of the Ryan children, medical bills, receipts for household items, and family photographs.
An online is not available for the papers. Please contact the archives.
Although unconfirmed, Agnes Storer appears to have been a writer who contributed to religious magazines such as The Rosary; she also apparently made generous donations to a number of Catholic charities and causes.
The scrapbook contains letters written to the Storer family—primarily to Agnes and her father, Horatio Robinson Storer, a prominent physician and numismatist—by members of the American Catholic hierarchy, as well as less prominent clergymen. Correspondents include: William Cardinal O'Connell; John Ireland, Archbishop of St. Paul; Patrick J. Ryan, Archbishop of Philadelphia; Michael J. Curley, Archbishop of Baltimore; Robert Seton, titular Archbishop of Heliopolis; Francis S. Chatard, Bishop of Vincennes; Paul James Francis Wattson, founder of the Society of Atonement; and James Andrew Corcoran, theologian, editor, and educator.
An online is not available for this collection. Please contact the archives.
This manuscript is a draft of a rejected M.A. thesis: "A Study of the Physical and Social Improvements of Twenty-Four Girls Who Attended Christ Child Farm For Convalescent Children During the Summer of 1938." Thorup was a student in Catholic University's School of Social Science.
An online is not available for this collection. Please contact the archives.
A finding aid to the papers of the Ursuline Convent.
The collection documents: the history and work of the Ursuline Community in the Boston area, its foundation in 1817, its destruction by an anti-Catholic mob in 1834, and the subsequent prosecution and acquittal of the rioters. Material within the collection evidences the strong anti-Catholic sentiment typical of New England in the 1800s.
A finding aid to the records of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington.
Records include minutes, correspondence, administrative files, scrapbooks, and photographs of St. Joseph’s, St. Vincent’s, and St. Rose’s orphanages in Washington, D.C.
A finding aid to the scrapbooks of the Washington Catholic Evidence Guild.
The Guild was a lay movement founded in London in 1918; it sought, by way of public assemblies, to educate non-Roman Catholics about the teachings of the church. Through the efforts of publishers Frank and Maisie Ward Sheed, the movement spread to the United States in 1931 and was ultimately represented in several cities: Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Hays (Kansas), New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Waterbury.
This collection of two scrapbooks consists of correspondence (photocopies and typescript), proceedings, press releases, handbills, questionnaires, and newspaper clippings.