Walking with Elizabeth Hayes
By M. Francine Shaw
With the election of a Chicago-born Pope, the city of Chicago has received considerable publicity. We MFICs have an interesting story linked to Chicago. In 1876, Elizabeth Hayes (Mother M. Ignatius), while traveling through Chicago on her way to Montreal to recruit French Canadians to join her Belle Prairie Mission, met 33-year-old Angelica Switz Chaffee. She asked to join Elizabeth and, along with 4 others, received the Franciscan habit in Belle Prairie Convent in August of the same year. Angelica was given the religious name of Sr. Mary of the Angels. She had worked with a Chicago printing company, so besides helping Elizabeth Hayes in the printery, she often accompanied her leader on travels, was her secretary, and after Elizabeth’s death succeeded her as Mother General and editor of the Annals of Our Lady of the Angels.
In 2014, an American relative of Angelica, Tom Davey, found my thesis on Elizabeth Hayes on a website with references to Chaffee. Tom provided a copy of a letter written by Mother Chaffee to her niece, Hattie Chaffee, on 24th August 1898. With the letter was a photo and on the back of it she had written, ‘I find myself able to satisfy your desire for my picture. The old Sister sitting down is your aunt. The black children around me are from Egypt & Africa, whom through the goodness of God I have brought over for Christian education.’
Another part of the letter which Tom scanned reads, ‘I visited Egypt myself this Spring, in fact I am but only over a month returned and went to the Holy Land. We could go to Jerusalem & Bethlehem to venerate the places of Our Dear Lord’s birth & Passion & Burial. We went to Emmaus … Please God I shall return to Egypt sometime in October to the Oasis of Fayoum in the Libyan desert where we will have a missioning work.’
We shared with Tom a 17-page typed copy of the diary of his Chicago ‘old Aunt Annie’ written in 1881 or ‘82. Chaffee’s diary includes first-hand details of experiences that she shared with Elizabeth Hayes, including facts about the Annals, and she used them when writing her ‘Memories of Elizabeth Hayes’, around 1912.
(If you wish to refer to Chaffee’s 1898 letter, see pp. 260-61 of Elizabeth Hayes: Pioneer Franciscan Journalist.)