April 5
Harriet Starr Cannon
Monastic, 1896
art by Rev. Kirsten Kohr of Geneva, Ohio Gracious God, who called Harriet Starr Cannon and her companions to revive the monastic vocation in the Episcopal Church and to dedicate their lives to you: Grant that we, after their example, may ever surrender ourselves to the revelation of your holy will; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Harriet Starr Cannon was one of the founding sisters, and first superior, of the Community of St. Mary, the first religious order for women formally recognized in the Episcopal Church.
Mother Harriet was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1823, and was orphaned in 1824 when her parents died of yellow fever. She grew up with her sister, her only surviving sibling, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Following the death of her sister, Harriet entered the Sisterhood of the Holy Communion, an order founded by William Augustus Muhlenberg, Rector of the Church of the Holy Communion in New York City. The sisters were heavily involved in the operation of clinics and care facilities that would become St. Luke’s Hospital in the City of New York, and Harriet served as a nurse.
Over time, however, she and other sisters began to yearn for a more traditionally monastic form of the religious life. When agreement could not be reached with the Sisters of the Holy Communion, a small group of them discerned a call to begin a new order. On the Feast of the Presentation, February 2, 1865, Bishop Horatio Potter of the Diocese of New York received from Harriet Cannon and her sisters the traditional monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience at St. Michael’s Church in Manhattan. The sisters began life together as the Community of St. Mary, and Harriet became the community’s first Superior.
The apostolate of the Community of St. Mary began with nursing and the care of women who had endured difficult circumstances. After a time, however, the sisters became increasingly committed to providing schools for the education of young women in addition to their medical work. The Community continued to grow and developed schools for girls, hospitals, and orphanages in New York, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. They continue their ministries to this day in Greenwich, New York, Sewanee, Tennessee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Luwinga, Malawi.
Mother Harriet died on April 5, 1896, in Peekskill, New York.
Excerpted directly from “Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2022,” p. 176-177.
