Title: "By All the Conduct of Their Lives": A Laywomen's Confraternity in New Orleans, 1730-1744
Abstract: O N May 27, I730, eight women called on a small community of Ursuline nuns living in temporary quarters at the west end of New Orleans and asked to set up a congregation of women and girls, in honor of the Very Blessed Virgin Mary.' The nuns responded by giving meeting space and sponsorship to the confraternity that took the name Ladies Congregation of the Children of Mary. A vellum-bound folio volume was purchased, and over the years entries were made on twenty-two of its 285 pages, recording the organization's constitution, papal bulls granted to it, a fund-raising effort, election results, and membership.2 The organization grew to include more than a third of the free women and marriageable girls living in New Orleans in the I73OS.3 The record book they kept, which has lain almost completely ignored in the archives of the Ursuline Convent of New Orleans, offers rare insight into how French colonial women conceptualized and executed their religious and social roles in the first decades of the colony's life. It suggests strong continuity between the religious culture of France and its colony and points to the practical effects that the transference
Publication Year: 1997
Publication Date: 1997-10-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 6
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