What Happened to Kate?

Permit of Admission of Destitute Child - Kate Nunn

I have been distracted from verifying sources (read: tedious) for the Hardenbook monograph I hope to finish soooon, to provide additional information I have on St. Joseph’s Home in Peekskill, NY. So I am taking the opportunity to post the form I was sent by the Franciscan Sisters archivist on my grandfather’s sister, Kate (or Katie) Nunn.  This family continues to be very elusive. I put them aside with the hope that sometime in the future information will be forthcoming. I post this so that those who had relatives at St. Joseph’s during this time can see what the form looked like.

Kate Nunn was born 21 December 1893, the sixth child of Joseph and Catherine (Kurtz) Nunn. The family lived at 2030 First Avenue in New York City. On 12 June 1900 the Department of Public Charities took Kate and her siblings from the parentless home and the children were sent to St. Joseph’s Home in Peekskill, New York.  The City of New York paid $2.00/week for her care.

On May 11, 1906, Sister Margaret of the Missionary Sisters Third Order of St. Francis received the following letter:

Dear Sister Margaret:

    This will be handed to you by the sister of Katie Nunn, an inmate of your institution who has applied at this office for her discharge, and after a careful examination we find she is in a position to provide for her support at home, and is willing and anxious to do so.

    I would therefore recommend that said child be discharged from your Institution to the custody of her sister, Mrs. Siebert and thereby relieve the City of her care and maintenance.

Frederick E. Bauer

Supt. Out-Door Poor

Enter Elizabeth “Lizzie” Nunn Siebert, Kate’s older sister, who upon getting married and winning a law suit against her neighbor, then made application to retrieve her siblings from St. Joseph’s Home.  Kate was discharged into Elizabeth’s care on 14 May 1906, and lived with her sister in the Bronx through 1920. It is after that when I lose Kate. 

St. Joseph's Home - Peekskill, NY - Nunn Children

I have noticed a number of views on the blogs I did regarding St. Joseph’s Home in Peekskill, New York, so I thought I would expand on that information and add more photos.

In June of 1900 the Nunn family, who lived at 2030 First Avenue, New York, was struggling. Katherine had just given birth to her eleventh child, Charles Casper, born in May 1900. Her husband, Joseph, died in early June 1900. Thirteen-year-old Elizabeth was left to care for her siblings while attending to her father’s business. It was a losing battle. On June 12, 1900 the City of New York’s Department of Public Charities arrived at 2030 First Avenue and took the children, with the exception of Elizabeth and infant Charles Casper. The children were placed with the Sisters of the 3^rd Order of St. Francis St. Joseph’s Home in Peekskill, New York. Elizabeth might have stayed with the Lewis family who lived in the same building, and who also had a large family. Baby Charles died in September of that year. The mother, Katherine, was admitted to the Manhattan State Hospital on June 26, 1900 for dementia. She died there seventeen years later on May 12, 1917 of Typhoid Fever. It is possible Katherine is buried on Hart’s Island, NY.

“Charity is the very center of Catholicism,” states the dissertation of Sister M. Jane Thomas Gorman FMSC.[1] During the mid-1800s, the Catholic Church reacted to the numbers of children throughout the country that no longer had family support. Catholic children were being placed in non-Catholic institutions, which threatened the core of their Catholic heritage.

St. Joseph's Home, Peekskill, NY
November 2010

In 1879 the New York Department of Public Welfare requested the Franciscan Missionary Sisters accept orphans at their property located in Peekskill, NY on the banks of the Hudson River; St. Joseph’s Home was born. The home took in destitute or orphaned children ages two to sixteen. 

On July 24, 1880 the first boy was admitted, and by 1899 St. Joseph’s was like a miniature city housing 1100 residents. The school offered traditional education courses, technical training, sewing, household arts, shoemaking, carpentry, baking and gardening. Travis Point, on the Hudson, provided bathing accommodations.  For chores done, the children received a daily salary of 12 cents; one cent fine for not doing their lessons was imposed. “St. Joseph’s was one of the first institutional schools to be placed under the New York State Regents.”[2]

St. Joseph Dormitory

In 1932, while chaplain at St. Joseph’s Home, Fr. Michael McGuire wrote the New Baltimore Catechism that was published in 1942.

Chapel at St. Joseph's Home, Peekskill, NY
November 2010

The school celebrated its 100^th anniversary in 1979; an arson fire destroyed the buildings and the school was taken down in January 1980. 

In 1904 the home housed a total of 1,009 children, 711 of which were from New York City. By 1905, residents numbered 1,056, with 787 from New York City. The 1905 New York Census for the Fifth Election District Peekskill, NY St. Joseph’s Home shows the Nunn children in residence:

Emma Nunn   age 6

Emilie Nunn   age 8

Joseph Nunn  age 9

Katie Nunn    age 12

George Nunn  age 13

One hundred ten years separate me from when my grandfather walked these grounds of St. Joseph’s Home. Visiting there provided me with a better understanding of his growing up years. And if he only knew – maybe he does – that I found him a century later.

St. Joseph's Home - All Saints Day 2010

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[1] Gorman, Sr. M. Jane Thomas, Fordham University Dissertation by. Tertiary Franciscan Missionary Sisters Sacred Heart, 1946 on St. Joseph’s Home, Peekskill, NY, April 15, 1946. Report at Westchester County Archives.

[2] Gorman, Sr. M. Jane Thomas, Fordham University Dissertation.