NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
CV NEWS FEED // Margaret Haughery was alone in New Orleans. She’d moved to the city from Baltimore with her husband in late 1835, but two years later both he and their infant daughter had died. An orphan herself, the 23–year–old Haughery had no family to whom she could turn. She was uneducated, illiterate, and penniless.
Thanks, however, to her years as a domestic servant in Baltimore, Haughery did know how to iron. That helped her find work at a local laundry where, as she ironed, she would watch the children who lived in a nearby orphanage play. Within months, she became friends with the children and the women who cared for them—-the Sisters of Charity.
She visited the Sisters regularly and began giving them part of her wages. From what Haughery kept for herself, she saved up enough money to buy two dairy cows for the orphans. Whatever milk they couldn’t drink, Haughery sold to local hotels and restaurants. Her little business grew rapidly, and within two years, she owned more than 40 cows, whose milk paid for the construction of two new orphanages.
A few more years passed, and Haughery took over a local bakery. As she did with the milk, she carried the bread around town on a small cart and sold it to hotels and restaurants, giving the surplus to the poor. Almost all her profits went back to the orphans. She kept little for herself, never owning more than two dresses at a time.
When she died on February 9, 1882, the woman who had given more than $600,000 to the poor of New Orleans and built more than half a dozen orphanages received a state funeral. City newspapers were edged in black as a sign of mourning for the woman dubbed “The Angel of the Delta,” and on her coffin rested a singular crucifix—-a gift sent with thanks from Pope Pius IX.
