Mother Mathilda Beasley, the first Black Catholic nun in Georgia, was a native of New Orleans.
Beasley was born on Nov. 14, 1832 to a woman named Caroline, who was enslaved by a man named James C. Taylor. According to Black Past, she became an orphan and eventually moved as a free woman to Savannah, Ga. No one knows how or why.
By the early 1850’s, Beasley was working as a seamstress and waitress, and secretly teaching enslaved and free Black children in her home. If caught breaking the Georgia law against teaching Black children, Beasley faced public lashings, according to historian Lizzie Rogers.
In 1869, Beasley married a wealthy Black restaurateur named Abraham, who was free and Catholic. “This was just after Mathilda was baptized Catholic, so maybe her baptism was in preparation for her marriage,” Rogers wrote. “Either way, it set her on the path to her vocation.”
When Abraham died in 1877, Beasley gave her entire inheritance to the Catholic Church. “Mathilda’s faith became a crucial part of her life when she became a widow,” Rogers wrote. In 1885, “she traveled to England, where she trained to become a (Franciscan) nun in the city of York.”
Two years later, Beasley opened the St. Francis Home for Colored Orphans, one of the first orphanages in the United States for Black girls. In 1889, she founded the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, the first group of Black nuns in Georgia.
Beasley, 71, was found dead kneeling in a private chapel in December 1903. According to the Georgia Historical Society, her burial clothes, will and funeral instructions were found next to her body.
“When she passed away … her funeral was standing room only,” Rogers wrote. “She had a huge impact on the city of Savannah and left behind an incredible legacy.”
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.
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