Locating Records for Sisters of St. Joseph at the Carondelet Consolidated Archive

(Thanks to StLGS office manager, Margie Giblin, for presenting the idea and some information for this week's blog.)

March has been designated Women’s History Month, and there are numerous websites, articles, and exhibits everywhere this month honoring women who have served in their communities in many capacities. We often discover that finding our female ancestors can be difficult for a variety of reasons, and so we sometimes stop trying because we’ve run out of ideas on where to look next. What if one of your ancestors was a Catholic nun? Are there records you can search to find out more about her? Well, if she was part of the Sisters of St. Joseph, the answer is a surprising “Yes!” and many of those records are right here in St. Louis where the motherhouse is located.

Many of the earliest residents of the area in south St. Louis once called Carondelet lived there because of the strong religious influence of the Catholic church. As early as 1702, Catholic missionaries were living along the River des Peres, which derived its name, “River of the Fathers,” from their presence. The founder of Carondelet, Clement Delor de Treget, set aside land in his settlement for a church, and a log chapel dedicated to St. Francis Xavier was built for that purpose by 1775. A series of larger, sturdier churches followed, and, four years after the town’s incorporation in 1832, three nuns representing the Sisters of St. Joseph opened the first school in the little town. 

The sisters were joined in 1837 by two more who were trained to teach the deaf. They started the St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf and added to the overall welfare of the citizens of Carondelet. Classes took place in a log cabin until 1841 when St. Joseph’s Academy, built of sturdy bricks, opened in 1841 on a campus which still houses the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet motherhouse at 6400 Minnesota Avenue. St. Joseph’s Academy was a fixture in the Carondelet neighborhood until 1926 when it became part of Fontbonne College (now a university). The rich history of the neighborhood and those who worked so diligently to educate its women continues to be treasured today at the Carondelet Consolidated Archive, which is “preserving and sharing the history, spirit and memory of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.”

This little-known repository may be just the place for you to find information on your ancestors who lived or worked in St. Louis, especially if they were Catholic or served as nuns in the St. Joseph order. The St. Louis building holds records from not only Missouri but from Albany, New York; Los Angeles, California; and Hawaii. (Materials from St. Paul, Minnesota, are held separately in Minnesota.) Records for each region, called a province, contain those from not just the city but many surrounding communities, both in and out of state.

Catherine Lucy, the current archivist in St. Louis, is happy to assist genealogists. She says that the archive holds:

• correspondence
• reports
• meeting minutes
• member files
• history of ministries
• photographs
• objects
• audio-visual materials

Ms. Lucy most recently worked with the Missouri History Museum to showcase the efforts of the sisters in the current “Beyond the Ballot: St. Louis and Suffrage” exhibit. They are part of the “charitable and benevolent organizations in St. Louis prior to 1920” portion of the display. Because the Carondelet motherhouse oversees all Sisters of St. Joseph personnel, even if your ancestor was not from St. Louis or was not a nun, you may find information about her there. Consider the archive if your ancestor worked in a Catholic school, hospital, youth center, orphan asylum, or housing community anywhere in the provinces mentioned above.

Visit the Carondelet Consolidated Archive website: https://csjcarondelet.org/about-us/carondelet-consolidated-archive/

To review the collections, there is a Finding Aid: https://csjcarondelet.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Consolidated-finding-aid-for-web.pdf 

You can also access some of the texts and images from the Archive on the Internet Archive website at https://archive.org/details/carondeletconsolidatedarchive

Due to the pandemic, the Archive, like many other public places, is closed to visitors and the staff is working a modified schedule. To send an email inquiry to the Carondelet Consolidated Archive: archivist@csjcarondelet.org. To call, (Monday through Friday): 314-678-0320 or to write: Carondelet Consolidated Archive, 6400 Minnesota Ave., St. Louis, MO 63111.

And more on Catholic records and Carondelet . . .

Coming up in April at the StLGS monthly meeting, "Researching Catholic Records" with archivist Rena Schergen, Saturday, 10 April 2021, at 10:00 a.m. (Central). Registration for this meeting will be on the Monthly Meeting page of the StLGS website and will open on or about 15 March 2021.

Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet Archive and Contact Information: https://www.csjsl.org/about-us/our-archives-1

Our blog from 24 September 2018 https://stlgs.blogspot.com/2018/09/ tells more about the history of this interesting part of the city.

History of St. Louis Neighborhoods: Carondelet: https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/archive/neighborhood-histories-norbury-wayman/carondelet/text6.htm