Cootehill Mercy Convent: Mary Anne Sadlier’s Letter

Before Christmas, we looked at the extraordinary life of Cootehill-born Mary Anne Sadlier, the celebrated North American author, translator, and newspaper owner. This week we remember Cootehill’s Convent of Mercy on the Station Road and the part played by that same writer in helping to raise funds to pay for the building. I unearthed the information while preparing a talk about Mary Anne. Cootehill will mark its 300th anniversary in 2025 and the account, which follows, shines a light on how the diaspora once helped the town. Home will always be home, no matter where you go.

On May 3, 1880, the town’s first Convent of Mercy was founded at 24 and 25 Bridge Street by the Very Rev Francis O’Reilly, PP, VG, and Sr Mary Stanislaus Molloy, with the help of Sr Mary Agnes Long and Sr Mary Joseph McQuaid. Also, a school was established at the ‘Back House’, Bridge Street. Both Rev Francis O’Reilly and Sr Mary Joseph McQuaid were Maudabawn natives; the latter a first cousin of the future Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev John Charles McQuaid and a niece to Dr Eugene McQuaid who became the ‘Convent Physician’.

Edward Smith, owner of the Bellamont Forest Estate and its stately home following the Coote family’s departure, was responsible for donating the land at Killycramph on the Station Road, upon which a purpose-built convent was built between 1880 and 1881. William Hague and Company, Market Square, Cavan, were the architects chosen to design the edifice and Thomas Connolly of Dublin was hired to build it.

Sadlier was a gifted historian and her novels contain accurate historical content. The beauty of nature and wildlife are often keenly described too. Being married to a publisher proved a great advantage to her and her books reached markets as far away as Asia and even Africa. In Ireland, some of her books were reprinted by publishers M.H. Gill, O’Connell Street, and James Duffy and Co Ltd, Westmoreland Street. Her books ranged from domestic novels to historical romances and children’s catechisms. In 1895, She received the Laetare medal from Notre Dame University in recognition of her remarkable achievements in the service of literature and religion.

The recently discovered letter revealed that Mary Anne had not forgotten her old hometown. On March 1, 1884, her letter to the Editor of the Boston Pilot was published. She wrote:

Dear Editor,

Knowing the wide circulation and corresponding influence of your journal amongst ‘the far dispersed Gael’ in the United States, I take the liberty of addressing through your columns an appeal to a certain portion of them, on behalf of a most interesting and excellent charity. It is to Cavan, and more especially Cootehill people amongst your readers that I desire to address myself.

Although my name, as Mrs J. Sadlier, has for some years disappeared from the public prints, I flatter myself there are some , perhaps many of my own country people who have not quite forgotten so old a friend, and will be glad to hear from her again. All the more so, I hope, that it is in the cause of religion and charity that I bring myself again before them.

When I left my native land, nigh forty years ago, the place of my nativity, Cootehill, Co Cavan, though a town of some 4,500 inhabitants, had neither Catholic school nor Catholic institution of any kind, nothing whatever except the four walls of a stone church, almost wholly without decoration or adornment. But the clergy were there, full of zeal, full of compassion for the spiritual wants of their people, and above all, of the means of Christian education for the children of the poor, alas! Too numerous in this place.

By the strenuous exertions of the late venerated parish priest of Cootehill, a community of, I think, the Sisters of Mercy was established there, and the erection of a convent at once commenced, the good Sisters, meanwhile, taking up their abode in a small house in Bridge Street, where they opened a school for poor children, thus supplying the first great want of the Catholic population. But these good religious do not continue themselves to the work of Christian education; they also visit the sick and look after the poor and destitute amongst people.

The building of the convent, delayed for a season, by the much lamented death of the beloved pastor, Rev Francis O’Reilly, was continued successfully by his worthy successor in the parish of Drumgoon, and is now completed and in active operation to the great joy of the Catholics of Cootehill, who contributed most liberally, according to their means, to the erection of the building, which now crowns a hill on the Dublin road near the entrance to Belmont Forest.

Unhappily, a debt of $10,000 still remains to be paid, and in order to reduce this debt, which necessarily weighs heavily on the institution, a Bazaar is to be held in April of this year (1884). As the Catholics of this town are, with very few exceptions, far from being rich, an appeal is this made to their relations and friends on this side of the Atlantic and to all those who, like myself, look back with fond remembrance to ‘the Green Hills of Cavan’ and the lovely scenes around Cootehill with which their earliest and sweetest associations are intertwined. Who that left the dear old town by the Erne, in the Spring-time of life to dwell in the land of the stranger beyond the ocean will not gladly contribute less or more, according to the means wherewith Heaven has blessed them in this New World, to a charity so intimately connected with the welfare of their town?

Donations for this object may be sent to Right Rev Dr Conaty, Bishop of Kilmore, Cavan, Ireland, or to Mrs. J. Sadlier, 706 Sherbrooke Street, Montreal, P.Q., who will have pleasure in forwarding any contributions thus received to the ladies who have organised the Bazaar in Cootehill. Such contributions will be publicly acknowledged and thankfully received.

I am, dear Mr Editor, respectfully yours,

M.A. Sadlier.

For Mary Anne, her heart lay forever in Cootehill. The American author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, captures this sentiment best when she says, ‘home is the nicest word there is.’

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all readers a Happy New Year.

READ MORE

Novelist Mary Anne Sadlier – ‘Something to write home about’