The Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth

For the first 85 years of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, few records (other than property and legal records and minimal information about the sisters and the missions) were maintained, in accordance with the wishes of our foundress, Mother Mary Xavier Mehegan. Around 1945 Mother Mary Benita Kane directed the Secretary of the Congregation to establish an archive. That project moved slowly in the first few decades following that directive but with the appointment of Sister Mary Gleason as Director of the Archives in 1976 a more professional approach was taken. In 1981 the second Director, Sister Elizabeth McLoughlin, oversaw the renovation of a large space in the basement of the Motherhouse with spacious offices, research areas and storage rooms in a state-of-the-art, climate-controlled archives. Sister Joan Repka served as the Director of Archives for one year before being elected to Congregational leadership. For the past decade Sister Noreen Neary has served in that role and acknowledges the sound footing for the archives established by her predecessors.

This statue of the Madonna and Child Jesus was given to Sister Mary Xavier Mehegan, a Sister of Charity of New York, circa 1859. The statue was given to her by the Sisters of Charity of New York when Sister Mary Xavier agreed to help found the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth in New Jersey. Now Mother Mary Xavier, she kept the statue in the first Motherhouse in Newark, New Jersey and carried it in her arms on the carriage ride to rural Morris County on July 2, 1860 when the Motherhouse was relocated to Madison, New Jersey. It is on display in the Heritage Room of the Motherhouse.

In October 1996 Sister Mary Carita Pendergast, a Sister of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, received this piece of embroidery, framed in glass, from Agnes Chao, a Chinese woman living in Shanghai at the time. Sister Carita had been a missioner in Hunan Province, China from 1933 to 1951. The Sisters of Charity raised the orphaned Agnes from infancy and educated her to the level of a normal school (teacher education) graduate. Agnes then taught in the Sisters’ school in Wuki.

When the Communist government interrogated Sister Carita prior to her expulsion from China in 1951, they turned to Agnes and demanded that she testify to the Sisters’ crimes, which she refused to do even with a gun pointed at her. In 1996 Agnes Chao was a grandmother, working in a factory; the cost of shipping the package to Sister Carita – a token of Agnes’s gratitude and concern – might have been two months’ salary.

Click on the image to learn more about each object's significance.