GILLESPIE, MOTHER ANGELA

U.S. foundress of the Congregation of Sisters of the Holy Cross (CSC); b. Brownsville, Pa., Feb. 21, 1824; d. Notre Dame, Ind., March 4, 1887. She was the daughter of John and Mary (Miers) Gillespie and was baptized Eliza Maria. In her early years she moved to Lancaster, Ohio, with her widowed mother, her sister, and her brother (later Rev. Neal Gillespie, CSC). While attending Georgetown Visitation School, Washington, D.C., Eliza, as niece of Sen. Thomas ewing, participated actively in the social life of the capital. She was interested also in the apostolate and organized a parochial school, taught at a Maryland state school where her tact won acceptance of religious instruction for Catholics, opened a Sunday school for African Americans, and acted as visiting nurse for the poor.

In 1853 Eliza entered the community of Holy Cross Sisters at Bertrand, Mich., and, as Sister Angela, was sent to the novitiate in Caen, France. After taking her vows, she returned to Bertrand to direct the academy, which in 1855 was transferred to St. Mary's, Notre Dame, Ind. There she introduced advanced courses in science and higher mathematics, foreign languages taught by teachers instructing in their native tongues, art and music offered by recognized artists, and a program of philosophy and theology. In April 1860 she began to publish the Metropolitan Readers (continued as the Excelsior Series ), a literature series graded for elementary, secondary, and college levels. As a translator of foreign writers and as unofficial editor of Ave Maria after 1866, she was instrumental in presenting such authors as Charles de Montalembert, François Chateaubriand, Louis Veuillot, Frédéric Ozanam, Orestes Brownson, and Isaac Hecker to American readers.

During the Civil War, Mother Angela established eight military hospitals, staffed two hospital ships, and provided for the direction of 80 sister-nurses. She was appointed provincial superior in 1869, and she founded St. Catherine's Institute, a teacher-training institution in Baltimore, Md., in 1874, staffing it with religious and lay teachers from St. Mary's and elsewhere. During the period 1855–82, Mother Angela made 45 foundations from New York to California and from Michigan to Texas.

Bibliography: m. mccandless, Family Portraits (Notre Dame, Ind. 1952). m. rita, A Story of Fifty Years (Notre Dame, Ind.1905). a. s. mcallister, Flame in the Wilderness: Life and Letters of Mother Angela Gillespie (Paterson 1944).

[m. r. daily]