Jewels from Jane, April 7

April 7, 1837.

"Good Mother Celestine and I [Sister Saint John Fournier, who was a novice at the time] left Lyons on April 7, 1837. We arrived at Brest the 17th of the same month, stayed with the Sisters of Wisdom at the expense of the government (the government also paid our passage), until the 5th of June when we embarked on the frigate Hermione; we stopped for four days at Fort Royale, then set sail for Havana, which we reached at the end of July. We were obliged to stay there for seventeen days, waiting for the French consul's boat which was to take us to New Orleans.

"Yellow fever had broken out in that city, and our Commander, who was a real father to us, did not want to let us leave the frigate. Every morning he sent two officers in uniform to take us to Holy Mass, and at five in the evening he would take us in his row boat to the consul's house or to the home of some of his French friends. He would bring us back at ten or eleven o'clock. A fine Religious life! But we could not help it; he was afraid we would get sick.

"Finally we left Havana for New Orleans. There the Vicar General, Father Jeanjean, fearing the fever, accompanied us next day on the boat to St. Louis, which we reached on the 4th of September, the same year. When we arrived, Bishop Rosati received us with open arms, saying he believed we had run away with the soldiers. (We had 400 on board besides the forty officers, all of whom treated us with the greatest respect.) The bishop placed us with the Sisters of Charity at the asylum, where we stayed for five days because of the continued rain. Finally, on the 9th of September, we left for Carondelet, which is only five or six miles from St. Louis. Our good sisters came half way to meet us. The bishop, in telling us he did not want us to lose our rosy cheeks, had not told us the real reason he was lodging us in St. Louis. The poor house was too small, he was having it raised one story, and there was no roof; but the weather was good.

"We opened our trunks and were distributing the little presents sent to our sisters, when all of a sudden the rain fell in torrents on us, on our beds, on our books, on everything. Good Mother Delphine had foreseen that, and had hired a cabin not far from our garden, a cabin which had been vacant for three years. We had to run there, but with mud up to our knees, we did not run very fast. They brought us some mattresses which we stretched out on the floor, and we tried to take a little rest in our wet habits, but alas, who could sleep with rats, mice and numberless little insects not only as companions but walking over us all night and for ten or twelve nights in succession? The house was finally covered with a roof, and we left our famished companions to feed themselves as best they could."

From a letter of Sister Saint John Fournier written in 1873

Sister Lucida Savage tells this story of their arrival in her history of the Congregation:

“Bishop Rosati, evidently fond of planning surprises, sent no word of their arrival to the community in Carondelet. On September 10, the private conveyance of a Catholic physician, Doctor Rodier, who was well known to Mother Delphine and her Sisters, was secured. The Doctor was a native of San Domingo, and had brought with him from there to St. Louis a faithful colored servant, familiarly known to his patients as Black Margaret. Besides being able to manage the Doctor’s horses well, Margaret possessed the additional accomplishment of speaking excellent French. She drove the two Sisters to their new home, and entertained them on the way with the history of St. Louis and its environs. They reached the convent during the evening recreation. The surprise of the Sisters there on beholding in the flesh those whom they believed dead was scarcely greater than their wonder and amusement at finding the two strangers better informed than themselves about conditions past and present in the village of Vide Poche [Empty Pocket as the town of Carondelet was known].

“The story of their journey was soon told. They had been detained at Brest until June 5, awaiting the sailing of the French frigate, Hermione, bound for the West Indies. There was a long delay at Havana and another at New Orleans; and the Sisters, weary of their three months at sea, knew nothing, of course, of the alarm which their failure to arrive earlier was causing on both sides of the Atlantic.”