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Part Taken by Women in American History


last territory came into the United States, a tide of emigration flowed steadily for a number of years in the direction of the Gulf of Mexico. Among the pioneers from Maryland was Mr. Charles Anthony Hardey, who fixed his residence in lower Louisiana. The young Republic of America after separating from the mother country, entered at once upon a life of intense energy, and the church was not the last to feel the inspiration of freedom. Before the close of the eighteenth century the orders of Carmel and the Visitation were established in the United States. The first decade of the nineteenth century saw the birth of Mother Seton's congregation in Maryland, and about this time two religious communities sprang up in the newly settled regions of the far West, the Lorettines and the Sisters of Nazareth in Kentucky. A little later came the Daughters of St. Dominic. On the Atlantic coast, the Ursulines had founded convents in New York and Boston. In 1815, when Bishop Dobourg was appointed to the See of New Orleans, his first care was to provide educational advantages for the children of his vast diocese; hence when in Paris, he made application to Mother Barat for a colony of nuns. He had been silently preparing among the Daughters of the Sacred Heart an apostle for the American mission in the person of Mother Phillipine Duchesne. On the fifteenth of December, 1804, Mother Barat accompanied by three nuns arrived at Sainte Marie and took possession of it in the name of the Sacred Heart. Mine. Duchesne was anxious to undertake the work for the church in the new field and far ofT regions of America. After fourteen years of waiting, her earnest desires were realized. She was accompanied by Mme. Octavie Berthold, who was born a Calvinist, her father having been Voltaire's private secretary. Mme. Eugenie Audi entered the Society of the Sacred Heart in Paris, and offered herself for the mission of the Sacred Heart in America. Two lay sisters were