The Golden Door: The Life of Katherine Drexel

By Katharine Burton

Wherever Mother Katharine Drexel went she lighted lamps of faith and hope to bring the Negro and the Indian from the shadows to the light. Surely of her it may be said, as of the woman in Proverbs, "Her lamp shall not be put out in the night." The amount she gave away in the course of her long life was phenomenal. In 1936 Cardinal Dougherty estimated that Mother Katharine had by that time given away $12,000,000 of her inheritance not only to the work of her own congregation but as aid to many struggling missions, including five in foreign countries. As for the works of her own congregation, at the time of her death she had established three houses of social service and one mission center, many rural schools, eight of them supervised by her Sisters, sixty-one other schools—twelve high schools, forty-eight elementary schools—and Xavier University, the first Catholic university in the country for its Negro citizens. To accomplish her part in this work for the neglected minorities of the United States, she gave up everything in the world—and in her case it was surely a great deal—but from her viewpoint it was not a sacrifice but a privilege. And perhaps this was the secret of all her life: she regarded herself as simply expending for God's people what God had given her to give to them. Without her faith, Katharine Drexel's gifts might still have done much good, but her giving was raised above the purely humanitarian level by the fact that she saw beyond the body which must be clothed and fed, to the mind which must be trained—and beyond to the soul which must be saved. And she accepted the responsibility.-Print ed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Braunfell Books
• Release date: Feb 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805231165

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

DEDICATION 4

Acknowledgments 5

Foreword 6

1—The Drexel Family 8

2—Philadelphia Childhood 14

3—First Trip Abroad 22

4—Walnut Street and St. Michel 27

5—The Social Years 34

6—Loss and Gain 44

7—The Way Grows Clear 50

8—Indian Trips and Aftermath 57

9—At Mercy Convent 66

10—A Work Begins 76

11—The River Flows South and West 90

12—Among the Navajos 98

13—Mission to Rome 110

14—Fields to the North 123

15—New Orleans and the Delta Country 132

16—New Undertakings: 1922-1935 144

17—The Will of God 155

18—The Later Years 168

19—The End 176

Bibliography 181

THE GOLDEN DOOR

THE LIFE OF KATHERINE DREXEL

BY

KATHERINE BURTON

"Go before the Golden Door—the Tabernacle—and say, ‘In Thee I place my trust.’"

ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA

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DEDICATION

To my friend

Mary M. Kernan

With my love

Acknowledgments

TO THE MANY PEOPLE who have sent me suggestions and factual data on Mother Katharine Drexel I wish to make here a general acknowledgment of their kindness. More particularly I should like to thank for their assistance Mrs. Seton Henry, Miss Helen Grace Smith, Father John La-Farge, S.J., Mr. S. J. Miraliotta of the New York Times, Sister M. Irenaeus of the Sisters of Mercy, and, above all, Mother Drexel’s daughters, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

Foreword

TO BE BORN a Philadelphian has always seemed to set one a little apart from the people of other places. One of its modern children, Christopher Morley, called it the most liveable and lovable of large cities, and when he spoke of its citizens he described Philadelphia as a surprisingly large town at the confluence of the Biddle and Drexel families.

In business and philanthropy, in the social world and the world of art, the name of Drexel ranks high in Philadelphia, as it does in the country at large. The first of the name in this country set up a modest brokerage house—F. M. Drexel, Exchange Broker—and this became with the years the great financial empire of Drexel and Company, with famous names among its partners—Morgan, Harjes, Stotesbury.

Francis Drexel’s sons followed their father’s success in business as well as in the circles of art and music. They left their mark also in the large philanthropic projects which they aided and sometimes themselves established. Anthony Drexel set up the great vocational school known as the Drexel Institute, with its many branches, including the School of Industrial Art and the School of Design. His son Francis was a generous patron of hospitals and schools, of missions and orphan asylums, and Francis’ three daughters followed in his steps. Two, Mrs. Walter George Smith and Mrs. Edward Morrell, established a vocational school at Eddington near Philadelphia, gave one of the buildings at Epiphany College near Baltimore and built St. Emma’s vocational school in Virginia for the education of the Negro. The third, after aiding through the large trust funds her father had set up for his daughters, many works for the Indian and the Negro, made them her greatest gift when she gave her life as well as her fortune to the forgotten minorities of America by founding a religious congregation, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, to be devoted entirely to their interests.

Today, when the Indian has been given at last some justice and is on the way to becoming a free citizen and no longer the ward of his government and at the mercy of politicians, when the Negro is the center of national attention, conditions are very different than they were when Katharine Drexel first addressed herself with courage and faith to the problems of these races.

At one of the Plenary Councils at Baltimore the American bishops had begged that thought, time, and themselves be given to these helpless people by the men and women of the Church. Katharine Drexel accepted the challenge and added to it the practical working power of the millions her father had left her in trust.

Her efforts were twofold. As a good American she wanted every American to share in his country’s privileges, and these Negroes and Indians were Americans. As a woman of faith she was concerned with the souls of the millions of Indians living on reservations and the even greater millions of Negroes in isolated settlements and crowded cities of the South and North.

The amount she gave away in the course of her long life was phenomenal. In 1936 Cardinal Dougherty estimated that Mother Katharine had by that time given away $12,000,000 of her inheritance not only to the work of her own congregation but as aid to many struggling missions, including five in foreign countries. As for the works of her own congregation, at the time of her death she had established three houses of social service and one mission center, many rural schools, eight of them supervised by her Sisters, sixty-one other schools—twelve high schools, forty-eight elementary schools—and Xavier University, the first Catholic university in the country for its Negro citizens.

To accomplish her part in this work for the neglected minorities of the United States, she gave up everything in the world—and in her case it was surely a great deal—but from her viewpoint it was not a sacrifice but a privilege. And perhaps this was the secret of all her life: she regarded herself as simply expending for God’s people what God had given her to give to them. Without her faith, Katharine Drexel’s gifts might still have done much good, but her giving was raised above the purely humanitarian level by the fact that she saw beyond the body which must be clothed and fed, to the mind which must be trained—and beyond to the soul which must be saved. And she accepted the responsibility.

Wherever Mother Katharine Drexel went she lighted lamps of faith and hope to bring the Negro and the Indian from the shadows to the light. Surely of her it may be said, as of the woman in Proverbs, Her lamp shall not be put out in the night.

1—The Drexel Family

IN THE PLEASANT drawing room of his eldest son’s house in Philadelphia, Francis Drexel, standing by the window looking out at the gray November day, turned anxiously as he heard steps hurrying down the hall. He saw with relief that a smile had replaced on young Francis’ face the anguished look he had worn an hour earlier. Mr. Drexel had arrived at the Race Street house that morning of November 26, 1858, in response to the breathless summons of his son’s houseman; Mrs. Francis was gravely ill and in danger of dying in childbirth.

Now Francis had come to tell him that the baby had been brought safely into the world and Hannah Jane was out of danger, although the doctor still held fears for the child, weakened by the mother’s long confinement. Do pray she will live! Francis ended fervently.

Mr. Drexel pressed his son’s hand. Of course I shall, he said. Then he answered briskly, Now I’m going home to tell your mother. Give Hannah Jane my love.

Francis went back upstairs to the room where his young wife lay very small in the big bed, smiling faintly as he stooped over her. He caught a look of fear in her eyes. Is the baby all right? she asked.

When he reassured her about the new daughter, she relaxed, evidently comforted. Let’s name her for your mother, she said. Katharine Drexel—it’s a pretty name, and she closed her eyes, too tired to say more.

Francis stood beside her until she fell asleep; then he took a glass of water from the table by the bed, went to the crib where the baby lay, and carefully poured a few drops on her forehead—so carefully that she did not waken.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I baptize you Katharine Mary, he whispered. For he had not told Hannah Jane the truth: the doctor was not certain the baby would survive. But two days later there was a turn for the better and the child was pronounced out of danger.

Although the baby throve from that time forward, the young mother did not regain her strength. Two weeks after the November day when Katharine was born, Hannah Jane lay in delirium and the doctor offered little hope of her recovery. Francis, who at first had prayed that her life might be spared, now found comfort in the thought that at least she did not know the sufferings which must be hers; for much of the time she was unconscious.

Christmas was an unhappy day in the Drexel home. Francis’ brother Anthony and his wife Ellen had taken his other child, three-year-old Elizabeth, to their home for the holidays. Francis spent the day sitting by his wife’s bed, looking at her flushed face, listening to her incoherent words, and hoping against hope...

On December 29, 1858, Katharine Mary Drexel was formally baptized in the Church of the Assumption in Philadelphia. Her godparents were Mary Drexel Lankenau, her father’s sister, and Joseph Drexel, her father’s youngest brother. After the ceremony they brought the baby to her mother’s bed. Hannah Jane smiled when they held her up high to show her how pretty her small daughter looked in the beautiful lace baptismal robe which little Elizabeth had worn but a few years before.

The fever and delirium had left her the previous day and although she was weak, she seemed so much better that Francis was encouraged to hope she might soon be well. But that night she grew worse and in the morning she died....

Hannah Jane was buried in the Dunkard churchyard of the Langstroth family in Germantown and Francis returned to his lonely home where the chatter of little Elizabeth and the wails of his baby daughter made him feel even more lonely and bereft Already his brother Anthony’s wife had offered to take the children into her own home for a time, in fact for as long as he wished to leave them with her. He had agreed thankfully, for he knew Ellen Drexel would give small Lizzie and Kate the same devoted care she gave to her own children.

A few days after his wife’s funeral he placed in a small box some of her personal possessions—her wedding ring, her gold thimble, her lorgnette, a brooch she had loved, a lock of her hair, a package of visiting cards with Mrs. Francis A. Drexel, 433 Race Street, engraved on them. He put the box away in a corner of the office safe, behind the important papers of Drexel and Company, and with them put away the past and prepared to live in the present and for the future of his children.

When Katharine Drexel was born the family had been established in Philadelphia for less than two generations, but its members were already a part of one of the great banking companies in the city with ramifications all over the United States. When Katharine’s grandfather, Francis Martin Drexel, had arrived in the New World some forty years before, he had not been a banker at all; in fact, he was not even a businessman, but a portrait painter, and that he had remained for twenty years. His coming to America had been in a way accidental and owing to the wars in Austria and the ensuing poverty of his family rather than to any burning desire to join the pioneering farers of his day.

He had been born in 1792 in the little Austrian town of Dornbirn in the Tyrolese Alps and his father at the time was a successful merchant and owner of a small factory. He was evidently also an understanding father, for when his son Francis manifested no desire to enter business but showed instead a fine aptitude for art, he sent him to Italy to study painting and languages under good teachers. Later, when Napoleon forced Austria to take part in his campaigns and the youth of the country was being drafted into the armies, Herr Drexel sent his son to France and Switzerland. In these countries for some years Francis earned a precarious livelihood with his brush, but when, after the battle of Leipzig, Austria was once more free, he came home, by that time a fairly experienced portrait painter. Unhappily, he found small opportunity for obtaining commissions in his own country, impoverished by years of strife; its people were too poor to pay for anything more than the bare necessities of life. Now his father was poor, too, his factory all but idle.

Letters from friends who had gone to America, and who wrote enthusiastically of the wonderful opportunities in that land, prompted Francis to think of emigrating there himself. When his father agreed with the idea and offered to give him enough money for his passage and support until he could earn his own way, he decided to go, although it was with reluctance. He had been happy to be back in Austria and especially in his little town of Dornbirn which was in one of the loveliest parts of a beautiful country—a small place surrounded by green meadows and innumerable orchards and backed by the wooded heights of great forests, with the snow-clad mountains above them.

He left in Dornbirn at least two examples of his early talents. On the outer wall of his home he had painted, in the fashion of the place and time, a mural in bright colors. It depicted Our Lady and the Child, and beneath was inscribed the title he had chosen: Maria unsere Hoffnung. His fellow townsmen were also proud of another work of his in water color: a life-size figure of Emperor Franz I of Austria. The young artist had been summoned to paint this portrait overnight when it was learned that the Emperor would pass through Dornbirn on his triumphal return home after the Allied victory at Leipzig. On that great occasion, the sovereign had remarked especially on the young man’s work, asking him where he had studied and commanding that a note be made of his name. Francis had been encouraged by his friends to believe that the Emperor might provide for his further artistic education, but when after several months no word had come from high places, he abandoned hope and, as he himself expressed it, left my native place again for the wide world to make a fortune.

The voyage to America on the John of Baltimore was a long and tiresome one of almost two and a half months, and when at last the sailing vessel touched the dock at the foot of Gallowhill Street in Philadelphia, Francis Martin Drexel felt unmixed pleasure, for he had travelled steerage and almost half the time had suffered from mal de mer. As he stepped ashore, the twenty-five-year-old exile was homesick for his native land, but this feeling soon passed. The quiet, ordered streets, the soberly pleasant houses of Philadelphia reminded him of an Old World city; the peaceful, friendly people made the tall, dark-haired Austrian feel welcome, and soon he was at home among them.

With the money left from his father’s gift, he opened a small studio on South Front Street. Within a month he had commissions for three portraits and the next year held an exhibition of his work at the Academy of Fine Arts. Within a few years he had made a place for himself in his new surroundings; his English had become fluent, and he was recognized as a portrait painter of talent. He also painted miniatures and taught art at Mr. Bazely’s academy in the city.

His social life flourished and he made a number of friends, largely in German-American circles. But it was not among these people that he was to find his future wife. In 1821 he married Catherine Hookey at St. Mary’s Church in Philadelphia. She was American born and of sturdy Pennsylvania stock; her great-uncle was Nicholas Buck after whom Bucks County was named. The newly-wedded couple made their home at 40 South Sixth Street and during the next years Francis was able to make a good living for the children born to them—Mary Johanna, Francis Anthony, and Anthony Joseph.

Five years after his marriage he met with difficulties. His wife’s brother-in-law, perhaps out of jealousy, libelled him so completely that Francis was obliged to take the matter to the courts. He won his case, but the unfortunate incident all but wrecked his career. In Philadelphia he lost his position as art instructor in the fashionable school where he taught, and his commissions dwindled and became so few that he could no longer properly support his family.

Hearing that there were opportunities for portrait painters to obtain work among the wealthy people of South America, he decided to go there for a time and to leave his family at home. In Ecuador, Chile, and Peru especially, he secured many commissions, and everywhere notables sat to him, including such patriots as the great Simón Bolívar and Bernardo O’Higgins, and Ramón Castilla, president of Peru. During his stay in South America Francis Drexel travelled widely and had many adventures—revolutions, thefts, and earthquakes among them. He painted literally hundreds of portraits, but although prominent men and women in the various countries flocked to him, he found that they did not flock in such numbers to pay him afterward. He became heartily sick of his exile from his family, but he stayed on because work was constantly offered him. He was able despite difficulties to make a living, and he hoped to collect the thousands of dollars that were still due to him.

During his absence Catherine made shift as best she could. She was never heard to complain, although she must have heard people say that she had been deserted, gossip which was far from the truth for Francis sent home to his wife a considerable part of the sums he earned from his painting—each year as much as four thousand dollars. It was true that she was never without money, but she was placed in a difficult position during his years away and she needed often to call on her courage and her faith in God to help her.

When, after four years, Francis returned, he still found it hard to re-establish himself in Philadelphia. His brother-in-law had told everyone that the damned Dutchman had abandoned his wife and children and even though his return showed this was riot true, distrust lingered. Francis obtained so few commissions as a portrait painter during the next five years that he sought to add to his income by other means: he sold dress trimmings and for a short time engaged in the brewery business with a German as partner, four Irishmen as helpers, and one horse which was blind. This last venture lasted only six months, and was so unsuccessful that Catherine’s savings from the money her husband had sent her from South America were drawn upon to support the family. In the end Francis decided to go again to other countries to paint, and in 1835 he sailed for Mexico and Central America.

This time his absence was much briefer and financially more successful. In addition to the sums derived from his portraits, he had, it seemed, speculated in foreign exchange, and the notables who had sat to him had given him an interest in investments. On his return from Mexico he announced he had decided to make a radical change in his method of earning a living; that year he ceased to be an artist and became a broker.

To outsiders and to some of his own family as well this business seemed to hold a very precarious future. He was already forty-five years old, he had but small business experience, and little capital. His friends tried to dissuade him from his foolish intention. He was, they said, much too old for so complicated a business. Then, too, 1838 was a poor year to embark on such a venture. There had been a financial depression the year before and many failures had followed; even the bank of Nicholas Biddle had been refused a new charter by the federal government.

Francis Drexel refused to heed this advice. He realized that in some ways his advisers were right, but he proposed to deal with uncurrent money. Then, too, he had made influential friends during his years in the south and he had a modest capital, for in Central America and Mexico he had made more than twenty-three thousand dollars, of which he had at least half left.

However, he decided not to start out in Philadelphia, but went instead to Louisville, Kentucky, and there he opened a small brokerage business for trading in local currencies, an important phase of the banking activities of that day when specie had almost disappeared from circulation, and paper money, issued by state-chartered banking institutions, took its place. Despite its limited range and his own inexperience, he did well enough to be encouraged to transfer his business to Philadelphia a year later, and he set up his office on South Third Street.

The location of the first Drexel firm in Philadelphia was in the busy financial district of a city which had been not only the first political capital of the nation but also its first banking center. Here Robert Morris had carried on the monetary affairs of the Revolutionary War. Here Alexander Hamilton had worked to maintain the credit of the new republic, and Stephen Girard to supply funds for the War of 1812. Here had been opened the first bank in the United States—the Bank of North America.

Francis Drexel took with him into his office his son Francis who was fourteen, and Anthony, two years younger, and began to put them through a strict apprenticeship as future partners in the house of F. M. Drexel, Exchange Broker. From that time on two young heads, the one blond, the other dark, often could be seen bending over the ledgers of the firm. Its members led no life of ease or leisure. Each day the father and sons brought a cold lunch from home and ate it when they found time. When the closing hour came for the employees, the Drexels stayed and worked on. Young Francis functioned as night watchman and often slept on the counter. He also helped out with the family finances by playing the organ at a church on Sunday, for during their father’s absence in South America, his mother, knowing her sons’ love of music, had allowed her boys to take music lessons, and Francis had chosen the organ. Now he welcomed the opportunity to put this talent to good use.

Although the first years were filled with uncertainty and hard work it was soon evident that Francis Martin Drexel had found his niche at last. In his travels he had met men of affairs who now remembered him and made use of his services. He engaged in lucrative transactions in foreign money, and also travelled about the country to get foreign gold and silver in redemption of the accumulated notes of interior banks. Then, too, from the first his transactions were known for their integrity and reliability. He made every effort to secure new accounts, for his family had increased in size, and in addition to his two older sons and Mary Johanna there were three more children: a son, Joseph Wilhelm, and two daughters, Heloise and Caroline.

By 1846, when the war with Mexico began, Francis felt he had enough experience to open a banking house, and into this a year later he took his two sons as partners—Francis, now twenty-two, and Anthony, twenty. The Mexican War afforded the bank of Drexel and Sons its great opportunity: to cooperate with the United States Treasury in floating loans to cover the cost of military operations. All of these were placed at par or better, and most of the loans were oversubscribed.

In 1849, when gold was discovered in California and the news brought a great rush of hopeful men to that state, Francis Drexel decided to open a bank on the West Coast. In San Francisco he took in two partners, Sather and Church, and remained with them for seven years, withdrawing from this partnership to return to Philadelphia during the panic of 1857. On his return, despite the stringency of the times, he found his original bank flourishing and expanding under his sons.

In 1860, when he had reached the age of sixty-eight, Francis decided that the time had come to turn over his banking and investment business entirely to the second generation of Drexels, retaining for himself the position of consultant and adviser to the firm. He had complete faith in his sons and knew that his two older boys complemented each other well—the venturesome Anthony, like his father willing to take chances, held back sometimes by the more conservative Francis from precipitate or unwise moves. And by this time they had been joined by his third son Joseph, who was working well with his more experienced brothers. In the following years as the firm of Drexel and Sons prospered under their supervision, and its young members matured, married, and founded families, the first Drexel had no cause to regret his decision.

2—Philadelphia Childhood

IN THE SPRING of 1860 the younger Francis Drexel came to tell his sister-in-law that soon he would be able to take his children home, since he was marrying again. His bride-to-be was the charming gray-eyed Emma Bouvier, who came from a cultivated and wealthy French family long established in Philadelphia.

At the elaborate wedding ceremony in St. Joseph’s Church there were many guests. The papers chronicled the event at length, telling even of the full choir and the orchestra in attendance. A long line of carriages was at the church, wrote the reporter, testifying to the social importance of the union.

Their extended honeymoon to Europe was the first vacation Francis Drexel had ever permitted himself. The couple did not return until October, having visited not only famous cities but also the little towns from which their forebears came—Pont St. Esprit in Languedoc, where relatives of Emma still lived, and Dornbirn in Austria. In the latter a townsman took them to see the birthplace of Francis Drexel and Francis was shown the painting of which his father had often told him, the one he had made for the wall of his home when he was only eighteen. Its colors were still bright and clear, its inscription—Maria unsere Hoffnung—still legible. The highlight of the young couple’s stay in Rome was an audience with the Pope. When Pius IX learned that they were on their