PETER, SARAH WORTHINGTON KING

Lay leader and philanthropist; b. Chillicothe, Ohio, May 10, 1800; d. Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb. 6, 1877. Sarah was the daughter of Thomas and Eleanor Van Swearingen Worthington. Her father, descended from an ancient Lancashire (England) Catholic family, whose Virginia branch had become Episcopalians, was the first U.S. senator from Ohio and its sixth governor. Sarah attended private schools in Kentucky and Baltimore, Maryland. At 16 she married Gen. Edward King, son of U.S. Senator Rufus King, a former member of the Continental Congress and ambassador to England. In 1831 the Kings moved to Cincinnati where they became prominent in social life. Sarah took part in various charitable activities and worked for St. Paul's Episcopal parish until Edward's death in 1836. Three of their five children predeceased their father.

Sarah spent the next four years at Cambridge, Massachusetts, while her sons, Rufus and Thomas, attended Harvard University. Meanwhile, she continued her own studies, becoming fluent in German, French, and Italian. In 1844 she married William Peter, British consul at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and former Member of Parliament. At their home in Philadelphia, they received many of the most distinguished literary men and influential citizens of the country. Sarah founded the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, the first of its kind and a model for similar schools in other cities. She helped to establish a Quaker home for magdalens, and interested herself in a projected Episcopalian religious order for women.

When her husband died in 1853, Sarah returned to Cincinnati where she organized the Ladies Academy of Art, from which developed the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts and School of Design, later absorbed into the Cincinnati Art Museum. While collecting masterpieces in Europe she had been impressed by the liturgy of the Catholic Church and the social work of Catholic nuns. On March 25, 1855, she was received into the Church at Trinità dei Monti convent, Rome. With her own fortune and with funds collected from European nobility and royalty, she increased her charitable works. Through her instrumentality, the Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis, Sisters of the Good Shepherd, Little Sisters of the Poor, Religious of the Sacred Heart, and the Passionist Fathers were brought to Cincinnati. Thereafter, she gave them substantial assistance, frequently helping them to make foundations in other cities.

During the U.S. Civil War Sarah was a field nurse with the Franciscan sisters and worked in Cincinnati hospitals and war prisons, even nursing a soldier who had falsely accused her of spying. While living the life of a semireligious in an apartment of the mansion she had given to one of the sisterhoods, she pursued her civic and apostolic works until her death.

Bibliography: Rufus King Papers, Cincinnati Historical Society, Cincinnati. j. h. lamott, History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, 1821–1921 (New York 1921). a. s. mcallister, In Winter We Flourish: Life and Letters of Sarah Worthington King Peter, 1800–1877 (New York 1939). m. r. king, Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Sarah Peter, 2 v. (Cincinnati 1889).

[j. d. sauter]