Beyond the Call

About the Book

This is the incredible story about the role of a particular group of religious women who came to Florida and Georgia immediately following the Civil War. This book relates the story of the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine, FL. These French Sisters came in 1866 to educate the liberated slaves. Florida’s first Bishop, Augustin Verot invited them from the City of Le Puy in south central France where the Congregation had been founded in 1650. The central piece of the story is about the first eight Sisters and those who followed them in establishing free schools, academies, the founding of orphanages, nursing during yellow fever epidemics (1877, 1888), teaching in Public Schools, Americanization of the Congregation, dynamics in dealing with Bishops in America, separation and excommunication, teaching the Apache Indians, their arrest in 1916 for teaching Black students. There are many letters written by the French Sisters to their comrades and family members in France in the late 1800’s giving the real story and the local color of the experiences.

About the Author

Sister Thomas Joseph was born in Sunnyside, N.Y. in 1926 to Lillian (Finn) and Thomas J. McGoldrick. She graduated from St. Joseph Academy, St. Augustine, FL in 1944 and subsequently entered the novitiate of the Sisters of St. Joseph in St. Augustine and made her final profession in 1950. Sister holds a B.A. from Barry University, Miami, Fl; an M.A. from U of F, Gainesville, FL and a Specialist degree from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. Currently she serves as the curator of the O’Reilly House Museum in St. Augustine, archivist for the Diocese of St. Augustine, FL and archivist of her congregation, the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine, FL.