Katherine Marie Drexel (1858 - 1955)

Born 26 Nov 1858 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Ancestors

Died 3 Mar 1955 at age 96 in Bensalem, Bucks, Pennsylvania, United States

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Katherine Drexel is Notable.

Katherine is the patron saint of racial justice and philanthropists.

Katharine Marie Drexel ^[1][2], the daughter of Francis Anthony Drexel and Hannah Jane Langstroth who married in 1854, was born 26 November 1858.

Notes

She was the 5th great-granddaughter of Dirck Keyser & Elizabet ter Himpel. Her lineage is as follows:

1. Katherine is the daughter of Hannah Jane Langstroth
   
2. Hannah is the daughter of Eliza Lehman
   
3. Eliza is the daughter of Elizabeth Keyser
   
4. Elizabeth is the daughter of Peter Keyser
   
5. Peter is the son of Dirck Keyser
   
6. Dirck is the son of Pieter Dircks Keyser
   
7. Pieter is the son of Dirck Keyser

This makes Dirck Keyser, founder of the Keyser family in America, the fifth great-grandfather of Katherine.

Biography

Catherine was baptized 29 Dec 1858 at Assumption BVM. Her godparents were Joseph W Drexel and Mary O Lankenau(^[3] Her mother died a little more than a month after her birth. Hannah Jane Langstroth Drexel was buried in the churchyard of the German Baptist Church in Germantown. In April 1860, Francis A. Drexel married as his second wife, Emma Bouvier, at St. Joseph's Catholic Church. With her older sister, and later a stepsister, Katharine was raised in a devout Catholic household. As a young woman she traveled abroad enjoying all the luxuries provided by her wealthy father. In 1884 on a trip to the American Northwest Katharine visited some of the Indian missions established by the Catholic Church.

In 1887 the three Drexel sisters visited the West, and their generosity led to the establishment of many "Drexel Indian schools". They had by this time become the heirs of their father's vast fortune. In 1889 Katharine entered the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh. Archbishop Bevilacqua has said, "Mother Katharine established the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament [1891] to give service to ... the blacks and Indians of this nation. The work she has done is now recognized in a special way by the church itself through this beatification". Mother Katharine died 3 May 1955, at age 96.^{[4][5][6][7][8]}

Founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament

Katharine Drexel was born to banker Francis Drexel and his wife Hannah Langstroth in November 26, 1858 in Philadelphia. Her father was a well known banker and philanthropist. In Jan 1859, her mother died from childbirth complications.
Katharine and her older sister were sent to live with their uncle for a year. Her father married Emma Bouvier and they went back to live with the new couple. Another sister was born in 1863. Katharine was close to her teenage years when she realized that Emma was not her biological mother.

With more than enough money for themselves, Emma fulfilled the financial requests of the needy who gathered at her gates on Rittenhouse Square a couple of times a week. The three little girls and a paid assistant helped. Both parents instilled in their daughters the idea that their wealth was simply loaned to them and was to be shared with others.

Her stepmother Emma died in 1883 and her father Francis died suddenly, in 1885. His will donated 1.5 million dollars to charity and left the rest to be split between the daughters. They received income from the estate, approximately $1000 a day a piece. The will was written so that no one could take advantage of the girls. If any of them should die without a child, the inheritance would be split between the other two.

When the family took a trip to the western part of the United States, Katharine, as a young woman, saw the plight and destitution of the native Indians. This experience aroused her desire to do something specific to help alleviate their condition. This was the beginning of her lifelong personal and financial support of numerous missions and missionaries in the United States. The first school she established was St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe, New Mexico (1887).

Later, when visiting Pope Leo XIII in Rome, and asking him for missionaries to staff some of the Indian missions that she as a lay person was financing, she was surprised to hear the Pope suggest that she become a missionary herself. After consultation with her spiritual director, Bishop James O'Connor, she made the decision to give herself totally to God, along with her inheritance, through service to American Indians and Afro-Americans.

Her wealth was now transformed into a poverty of spirit that became a daily constant in a life supported only by the bare necessities. On February 12, 1891, she professed her first vows as a religious, founding the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament whose dedication would be to share the message of the Gospel and the life of the Eucharist among American Indians and Afro-Americans.

Always a woman of intense prayer, Katharine found in the Eucharist the source of her love for the poor and oppressed and of her concern to reach out to combat the effects of racism. Knowing that many Afro-Americans were far from free, still living in substandard conditions as sharecroppers or underpaid menials, denied education and constitutional rights enjoyed by others, she felt a compassionate urgency to help change racial attitudes in the United States.

The plantation at that time was an entrenched social institution in which the coloured people continued to be victims of oppression. This was a deep affront to Katharine's sense of justice. The need for quality education loomed before her, and she discussed this need with some who shared her concern about the inequality of education for Afro-Americans in the cities. Restrictions of the law also prevented them in the rural South from obtaining a basic education.

Founding and staffing schools for both Native Americans and Afro-Americans throughout the country became a priority for Katharine and her congregation. During her lifetime, she opened, staffed and directly supported nearly 60 schools and missions, especially in the West and Southwest United States. Her crowning educational focus was the establishment in 1925 of Xavier University of Louisiana, the only predominantly Afro-American Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States. Religious education, social service, visiting in homes, in hospitals and in prisons were also included in the ministries of Katharine and the Sisters.

In her quiet way, Katharine combined prayerful and total dependence on Divine Providence with determined activism. Her joyous incisiveness, attuned to the Holy Spirit, penetrated obstacles and facilitated her advances for social justice. Through the prophetic witness of Katharine Drexel's initiative, the Church in the United States was enabled to become aware of the grave domestic need for an apostolate among Native Americans and Afro-Americans. She did not hesitate to speak out against injustice, taking a public stance when racial discrimination was in evidence.

For the last 18 years of her life, she was rendered almost completely immobile because of a serious illness. During these years she gave herself to a life of adoration and contemplation as she had desired from early childhood. She died on March 3, 1955.

Katharine left a four-fold dynamic legacy to her Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, who continue her apostolate today, and indeed to all peoples:

1. her love for the Eucharist, her spirit of prayer, and her Eucharistic perspective on the unity of all peoples;
2. her undaunted spirit of courageous initiative in addressing social iniquities among minorities — one hundred years before such concern aroused public interest in the United States;
3. her belief in the importance of quality education for all, and her efforts to achieve it;
4. her total giving of self, of her inheritance and all material goods in selfless service of the victims of injustice.^[9]

Sainthood

The Beatification and Canonization of a Keyser Descendant^[10]

Mother Katharine Marie Drexel, the founder of the Catholic Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, was beatified in Rome on November 20, 1988 by Pope John Paul II.

She was canonized and declared a Saint on October 1, 2000 in Saint Peter's Square, Vatican City by Pope John Paul II.

Saint Katherine's Feastday is March 3 and she is the Patron Saint of racial justice and philanthropists.

She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2011, being only the second recognized American-born saint ^[11].

Sources

1. ↑ Wikipedia Bio
2. ↑ Biography Bio
3. ↑ baptism record at findmypast
4. ↑ United States Census 1870
5. ↑ United States Census 1880
6. ↑ United States Census 1900
7. ↑ United States Census 1910
8. ↑ Find A Grave: Memorial #6796233
9. ↑ St. Katherine's Philanthropy
10. ↑ Vatican News
11. ↑ [https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/st-katharine-drexel/ National Women's Hall of Fame