A Diocesan Patron
Detiege, SSF (c) 1976.]
In the first half of the 19th century, one of the glories of both the Roman Catholic
Church and New Orleans, though a city of bondage, was the founding of a religious
community of Black nuns, the Sisters of the Holy Family, who gave charitable
assistance to the poor and unfortunate of their race, bond and free.
book Our People and Our History, an account of the free Black person in Louisiana, depicted as one of the most
remarkable women of African descent in the last century known for constant ministration to the needy and suffering of
her race. A week after her death, 1862, an unknown friend wrote of her in Le Propagateur Catholique: "Henriette
Delille had for long years devoted herself without reserve to the instruction of the ignorant and principally the slave.
... To perpetuate this sort of apostolate so difficult but so necessary she founded ... the House of the Holy Family, a
house poor and little known except by poor and the young and which for the past ten or twelve years had produced
without noise a considerable good which will continue.
In capsule, the accomplishments of Miss Delille, in the era she lived, classify her as an early feminist, educator and
social worker. Doubtless this is an exceptional list of attainments for any woman, especially one of African descent
living in a city where most of her race was enslaved and at a time when the average White woman was in the home
spinning, weaving and making butter.
Henriette Delille, born early in the year 1813, was a descendant of some of the oldest free Black families in New
Orleans. She was the youngest of three children and grew up with her sister Cecilia, six years older than she, and
her brother Jean, three, in a little Spanish-style cottage on Burgundy St. between St. Peter and Toulouse.
In 1824, the excitement in Henriette's life was her introduction to a French nun, Sr. St. Marthe Fontier. Sr. St. Marthe,
the only member of a French religious order known as the Dames Hospitalier living in New Orleans, purchased a lot
on Quartier or Barracks St. in 1823 and with the financial assistance of the free people of color, opened a school for
young girls of that class. The little school was the nucleus for missionary activities among Blacks, bond and free.
Sr. St. Marthe, having more than she could do, taught young Black girls how to teach religion to the slaves whose
masters sent them for such classes. By the time Henriette was about 14, she had entered wholeheartedly into this
work.
As is with youth, Henriette and her friends' faith burst forth in an enthusiastic giving of themselves to the poor and
unfortunate of their race and, most of all, a spirit of prayer. They took a fervent delight in visiting the sick and the
aged, feeding the indigent, teaching religion to the poor and the slave, and praying in church.
In 1838, Father Etienne Jean Francois Blanc's permission to establish with the new church of St. Augustine a
religious community of Black nuns under the leadership of Henriette Delille. Doubtless their purpose in the new
parish was simply to continue their works of charity among the poor, the aged, the sick, and the slaves of their race.
This permission was granted.
On the red letter day od November 21, 1842, Henriette Delille and Juliette Gaudin settled down to founding the
Sisters of the Holy Family. A year later, Josephine Charles joined these two.
During the first years, immense courage, self-sacrifice, and labor were required of them, but "they never lost hope."
These Black nuns were ridiculed and laughed at, but the infant community went along placidly giving "succor and
relief to the poor, the helpless old colored aged, and orphans." The first work undertaken by the little religious
community was the teaching of poor slave children, and a great deal was accomplished.
There were times when the sisters gave their own meals to a poor widow and her children and then simply drank a
glass a "sweetened water" before bedtime. Where Mere Henriette finally received money, before the Sisters supplied
their own needs, the first dollar had to be given to someone poorer than themselves.
Before 1862, there was the work at the Hospice of the Holy Family to accommodate the many people seeking aid.
Attached to the Hospice on St. Bernard was a little Charity Hospital for the Black poor. Here, Mere Henriette treated
the destitute who came for help. During epidemics, she also willingly gave her service and skill in nursing by visiting
the home of the afflicted. She was also on call to visit sick slaves in the house of their masters or in the slaveyards.
A home was opened on Dauphine St. known as the Asylum of the Children of the Holy Family. Here, the poor were
given a rudimentary education in a free school, orphans were sheltered, and the slaves were taught religion.
After the Civil War the Sisters had night school for the former slaves who could not both study and support
themselves at the same time during the day.
For the first 20 years of the existence of this community, Henriette Delille, although the youngest, was the driving
force or spark of faith, courage and courage that helped overcome all obstacles that might deter that work. Though
she had a determination of steel and a dynamic enthusiastic personality, she was plagued with weak health.
Henriette suffered from pleurisy, which caused stabbing chest pains and made her breathing very difficult. No
amount of warnings from the other Sisters, pain or arguments stopped her from devoting "herself without reserve to
the ignorant and principally the slaves" and from devoutly visiting the sick.
Worn out by the work, on Nov. 17, 1862, Henriette Delille died at the age of 50 years old while a community of 12
nuns in prayer were asking God to spare her life. The people who gathered at her funeral, free people of color,
aristocratic white ladies, the poor, the aged, the orphans and, most of all, her friends the slaves, all testified "by their
sorrow how keenly felt was the loss of her who for the love of Jesus Christ made herself the humble and devoted
servant of the slaves" as noted in her obituary.