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Deaconesses Home

Meet the Deaconesses  M-R

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Mary Mann​ worked, I believe, in the Diocese of Atlanta or maybe the Diocese of Georgia. She ran a school for African-American girls preparing to work as domestic servants. She assisted Robert Winslow Gordon in his work of collecting traditional songs from the rural South. Gordon is best know famously or infamously, for transliteration of the hymn "Kumbaya" from the Gullah dialect into English. [research of Deacon Geri Swanson]

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Kate (Catherine) Sinton Mayer was born on the 19th of June 1892, one of a set of twins born to J.F. and Kate Mayer. We know that in 1933 at around 41 years of age, she was serving as deaconess in New York City at Grace Church on Broadway and East 10th Street. In 1949 she served in Montgomery Alabama. According to the Social Security Death Index, she died in New York City on the 6th of September 1969 at the age of 77. She is buried in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia.

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Anne (Hannah Annie Pew) was charged with running Holy Cross House (a settlement house in the Old North St. Louis neighborhood) for six years (1906-1912).
  The Church News wrote, "During the six years that Deaconess Anne was in charge of Holy Cross House she was everything to the people except their Bishop. Not only Deaconess, which I suppose means the feminine of 'servant,' but also their pastor, which must mean their shepherdess, for she watched over needs spiritual as carefully as any commissioned pastor could do …she filled all the functions of a minister if not of a priest." In ill health, Anne moved to California to recover in 1912. She never returned to the Gateway City.
Read the full bio.

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Anna Ritchie was an extraordinary lady, born in 1884, she was educated in New Pitsligo, Scotland. She became an early graduate of Edinburgh University and received teacher training at Dalry House, the Episcopal teacher training college. When she returned to Buchan in 1931 to look after her widowed mother, Anna took an interest in the education of children with disabilities, for whom there was little provision. This culminated in her badgering the education committee to establish the special needs school in Peterhead which was named in her honour. Anna Ritchie became the first Deaconess of the Scottish Episcopal Church and served at St. Drostan's, Old Deer for many years.

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