And then there were Nuns…

A few months ago I was asked to speak on the history of Brooklyn’s Catholic schools to a group of parochial school teachers. What I discovered as I was preparing my talk surprised me. As we all know, this is a tough period for Catholic education in the United States. For Catholics of an older generation than mine (post-Vatican II), it was impossible to imagine schools without nuns or brothers. But the fact is that many of the first Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Queens were not started or staffed by religious. In many cases, it was the laity who took the lead. Take Most Holy Trinity in Williamsburg, for example. Founded in 1841, for decades the Dominican Sisters operated the school. But they weren’t the ones who started it. The school’s first principal was a Mrs. Barbara Baer, and its earliest teachers included a Mr. Wenz, Miss Kunz, and Mrs. Meckuss. Later the Dominicans moved into Queens, always teaching in predominantly German parishes. Before they took over St. Fidelis School in College Point, the faculty consisted of a Mr. Treubig, Mr. Volkenrad, Mr. Sauer, Mr. Antoni, and Mr. Sulzbach. At St. Mary’s School in Winfield, Mr. Boyle and Mrs. Donegan taught the English-speaking students, while a Mr. Kotz taught the Germans. In 1846, on the south side of Williamsburg, SS. Peter & Paul School was started by an Englishwoman, Miss Elizabeth Bridge, and an Irishman, Mr. John Moran. Eleven years later, the Sisters of St. Joseph (Josephites) took over the school. When St. Joseph School, Prospect Heights, started in 1853, its founding faculty included the Misses Rosanna and Mary Teevan, and a Mrs. Mary Dale. For its first fifteen years, the school was run by lay people, until the Sisters of St. Joseph arrived in 1868, it was run by lay people. The 1917 parish journal comments: “Others of the early teachers who still live in the memory of their pupils were: Mr. and Mrs. Garvey, Mr. Mooney, Miss Mary Sweeney, Miss McIvor, Miss McKiernan, Miss Julia Galvin, a Mr. Morton and a Mr. Fitzgerald.” At St. John the Evangelist, Park Slope, Paddy McKnight started the school in 1854. It soon had two hundred students. In 1870, the Josephites took charge of the girls, and the Franciscan Brothers began teaching the boys. When the Josephites came to Holy Cross, Flatbush, in 1872, lay teachers had run the school for nearly a generation. The school was begun in the church gallery with 125 children. A Patrick H. Curran donated a building for the school. The parish journal had this to say about the school’s principal, Mr. Timothy Hurley: “A gentleman of the highest culture, who chose to hide his abilities in a village school. He lived to see almost two generations schooled in his manly but gentle ways, and left behind him a name synonymous with education throughout the country towns.” The oldest available photo of Catholic school children in Brooklyn (shown above) dates back to 1882, at St. John the Evangelist School in Park Slope. It’s worth noting that the teacher standing with the boys is not a nun or a brother, but a layman. (H/T to Deacon Greg Kandra for suggesting the title!).