Deaconesses A-F
 St. Clement's
Anna R. Armstrong was born on 31 January 1873 and was set apart as deaconess in 1908 by Bishop David H. Greer of New York, after graduation from the Training School at Grace Church. Anna spent the majority of her diaconal life in the diocese of New York. From 1909 until 1917 she served various churches in the Bronx including St. Martha’s and St. James in Fordham. After a brief tenure at St. Peter’s Church in Westchester, Anna settled into an eleven-year term at St. Clement’s Church located in Manhattan’s notorious Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. While serving at St. Clement’s, Anna, who had a theatrical background, produced many plays and pageants. Due to failing health, Anna retired from active parish service in 1940 and became co-supervisor of St. Clare’s Home in Upper Red Hook, New York. She later retired to St. Anne’s Guest House and Convent in Kingston, where she died at the age of 87 on 29 August 1960. Her funeral was held at Christ Church, Red Hook. She is buried in the churchyard of St. John the Evangelist in Barrytown, along with several other deaconesses. [research of Deacon Geri Swanson]
Gertrude J. Baker was Set Apart in May 16, 1911 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, NY. View her certificate. She was Head of the Standing Rock Mission, Church of St. Elizabeth, South Dakota. She was also the principal of St. Elizabeth's School, Wakhala, South Dakota and later on staff of St. George's Church, Stuyvesant Square, NY. In 1930 she resigned and was married.
Presentation on Deaconess Harriet Bedell, by Deacon Tracie Middleton. Looks at Bedell's early deaconess training, her work at Whirlwind Mission in Oklahoma, Stevens Village in Alaska, in Allakaket, near the Arctic Circle, the Florida Everglades Seminole community, and more.
Charlotte Boyd was born in 1872. She was set apart as deaconess on 6 May 1901. Her primary ministry was to the St. Bartholomew Girls’ Club. She also was director of the summer home and farm St. Bartholomew’s sponsored in Pawling, New York. During World War I, Deaconess Boyd oversaw the work of St. Bartholomew’s Red Cross Chapter, dispensing 48,500 handwrapped surgical dressings and 1,659 hand-knitted garments to American troops in France and Belgium. When asked what part of her training was most influential in her life as a deaconess, Boyd replied: “To have known Dr. [William Reed] Huntington and to have felt his influence has been the greatest inspiration.” Boyd left St. Bartholomew’s in 1931 and, after a trip to England, took up her work at Ascension in Manhattan. She retired in 1957 after 56 years of active church work and died on 17 January 1965 in Quebec, Canada, where she lived with her sister. She was 92 at the time of her death. [research of Deacon Geri Swanson]
Emily Cooper served as one of the early deaconesses trained and commissioned out of St. Mary’s Church in Brooklyn, New York. A forty-four-year-old widow, Emily relocated to her native Kentucky after her commissioning and, in 1880, became the first director for The Home of the Innocents in Louisville, Kentucky.
This Home provided a safe place for infants and small children who were abused, orphaned, or abandoned. Children whose parents could not rear them, because of the systemic pressures that created mass poverty, also came to live at the Home. Local hospitals and orphanages frequently sent infants who had been left, often to die, to the Home so that they would be loved in their final weeks and months. Many children were simply placed in baskets on the front steps of the Home. Regardless of how they arrived, Emily and the many women who worked there nurtured, cared for, and loved the children. She oversaw the creation and development of the first kindergarten in Kentucky. Emily named the infants who arrived nameless. She created a community that loved them and protected them in a culture that too often saw the poorest children as disposable. She assisted at the baptism of almost three hundred of the children at the Home. And she cared for those who were dying until they drew their final breath. Under her guidance, the Home became one of the leading charity organizations in Louisville and remains a vital ministry today. Two hundred and twenty of the children who died at the Home are buried, along with Sister Emily, at Cave Hill Cemetery. While records indicate the plots, most of the graves are unmarked. Two sculptures of Deaconess Emily mark the area. In one, she is holding an infant heavenward, and the infant is releasing a dove. The other is of Deaconess Emily shaking out a blanket with a butterfly pattern, with the butterflies coming to life and ascending to God. Its base has the names of the children buried in the plot, as well as an inscription to those children whose names are known to God alone. Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, is her final resting place. Blanche Henriques DeLeon, a graduate of St Faith’s/The New York School for Deaconesses, was originally from Washington, DC. Deaconess DeLeon served the congregation of St. Bartholomew's in Manhattan in the early years of the twentieth century. Later she left the Order of Deaconesses of her own volition, and entered the sisterhood known as the Order of St. Mary, where she took the name Sister Ignatia. She was named Sister Superior of the Trinity Mission House on Fulton Street, Manhattan, NYC in 1918.
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