St. Katharine’s Hall Wayside Marker
St. Katharine’s Hall Marker, 2025, Clausson
Shrine Church and St. Katharine’s Hall, 2025, Clausson
It’s a crisp February day, and the sun is finally showing its face again. In the sunlight, it feels almost like spring. A brisk walk from campus, with admittedly a few wrong turns, brought me to St. Katharine’s Hall and the wayside marker in front commemorating the site. Situated beside the old St. Patrick’s Church, now called the Shrine Church, is the hall built at the directive of Katharine Drexel, as a location for teaching the Native Americans at the Carlisle Indian School. [1]
Drexel was born in 1858 as the heir to an incredibly rich and prominent family in Philadelphia. She was raised firmly in the Roman Catholic faith. After her father’s passing in 1885, Drexel and her sisters inherited his $15 million-dollar estate.[2] In 1889, Drexel made her monastic vows, adding the additional vow to be a “mother and servant of the Indian and Negro races” which is quoted on the marker in front of her hall in Carlisle. [3] Using her immense wealth, Drexel traveled about the nation funding, promoting, and teaching at schools for Black and Native American children.[4] St. Katharine’s Hall in Carlisle was one of these schools.
Being far more familiar with the more infamous legacy of the Indian boarding schools, generally hearing about them in the context of phrases like “cultural genocide,” “forced assimilation,” or, worse yet, with Captain Pratt’s quote “kill the Indian and save the man,” I was instantly perturbed by what I saw as benign platitudes on the wayside marker.[5] I immediately painted Drexel as the stereotypical cruel nun, with high standards and harsh punishments, paired with images of Native students being taken from their families and having their hair cut forcibly. Not a pretty picture—nor an accurate one.
Mother Katharine Drexel, 1941, [S.B.S.]
Drexel was certainly guilty of a “White Savior” bias, believing that she was “saving souls” particularly, she said “‘in the case of a pagan people, [where] the children may carry into the home the lessons of faith and morality’” taught at the schools she funded.[6] For this reason though, she favored building schools on reservations, allowing students to stay with their families. Some Native communities recall her mission sites as “places of abuse and neglect,” while others are considered “models of cooperation and cultural enrichment.”[7] Though none of these schools were nearly so infamously problematic as the Carlisle Industrial school.[8] It is also worth noting that despite the way it sounds from the marker, she did not actually work at the Carlisle Indian School itself, rather at the hall bearing her name where she provided only religious education to specifically the Catholic students at the Indian School, which was otherwise Protestant affiliated.[9] The “Select Free Colored School” and many of her other schools provided academic education primarily with religious and moral education as well.[10]
While some would argue that her bias alone makes her a participant in culturicide, I would argue that she was more so a bystander to the attempted eradication of the Native American culture, having worked so near to schools like the Carlisle Indian School, allowing them to commit abuses. Still, in the 21st century there is a hesitance to honor individuals involved with the Carlisle Indian School or the early 20th century Indian education initiative in general because of the stains of racism and abuse on the initiative as a whole. However, this marker was put up by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament—which was founded by St. Katharine—not a government or secular organization, making it seem less out of place.[11]
St. Patrick’s Church Marker, 2009, William Fischer, Jr., [WEB]
Hot-Chee Dogs Marker, 2021, Shane Oliver, [WEB]
The marker looks remarkably similar to those put up by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, though. (See the image of St. Patrick’s Church marker for reference.)[12] Both are dark blue, rectangular, with a flourish at the top, etc. The one for St. Katharine’s Hall has a different insignia on top, though, because it is not a state ordained marker, as those by the Commission are. Other historical markers in Carlisle that aren’t put up by the state come in different colors or shapes to differentiate themselves, such as the “Hot-Chee Dogs” marker by the Hamilton Restaurant.[13] The marker for St. Katharine’s Hall seems to be attempting to emulate the official historical markers, as though by doing so it presents itself with greater authority and importance.
It may seem that up to this point, I have neglected Drexel’s service to the African American community as noted on the marker. That is because I wanted to end on a wholly positive note. This marker clearly wanted to remember the good work that Drexel did in her life. It instantly led me to skepticism because of its proximity to and mention of the infamous Indian School. While her involvement with Indian schools is checkered, her work with the African American community could be called patronizing at the worst. She stood up for anti-lynching bills, fought against racial profiling, and she educated Black youths without expecting their conversion to Catholicism in return. Being positioned across the street from Carlisle’s historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, it’s a pity the marker didn’t give greater emphasis on Drexel’s egalitarian work.[14]
Coming at the marker with so much historical, emotional baggage, I felt that the wording of the marker was trying to praise someone with their flowery vow to conceal the reality of their work. Whereas, in reality, the marker’s use of her monastic vow is problematic for an entirely different reason: the vow was spoken before she had actually done the service to the Black and Native American communities, so it fails to really convey the full depth of her service. I wish instead it spoke plainly to her devotion to education and equality, admitting where at times it was misguided but using that to emphasize her opinions on equality that were actually quite progressive at the time. Ironically, a more secular and nuanced marker would paint Drexel as more of a saint than the current one because readers would find it more believable and be able to more fully honor and commemorate her for the truly impressive human that she was.
[1] “About Us—St. Patrick Church,” St. Patrick Church, Carlisle, last modified 2020, accessed February 28, 2025, [WEB]; Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (S.B.S.), “St. Katharine’s Hall,” marker (Carlisle, PA).
[2] Amanda Bresie, “Mother Katharine Drexel’s Benevolent Empire: The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions and the Education of Native Americans, 1885–1935,” in Remapping the History of Catholicism in the United States, ed. David J. Endres, Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 72, [JSTOR]; “St. Katharine Drexel,” Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, accessed March 2, 2025, [WEB].
[3] Rachel Bulman, “‘Think It, Desire It, Speak It, Act It’: St. Katharine Drexel on Racial Equality,” Word on Fire, March 3, 2021, [WEB]; S.B.S., “St. Katharine’s Hall”
[4] Bresie, “Mother Katharine Drexel’s Benevolent Empire,” 71-94; Bulman, “‘Think it, Desire It, Speak It, Act It’”
[5] Arnold Krupat, “Introduction,” in Boarding School Voices: Carlisle Indian School Students Speak, (University of Nebraska Press, 2021) xiv-xv, [JSTOR].
[6] Bresie, “Mother Katharine Drexel’s Benevolent Empire,” 92.
[7] Bresie, “Mother Katharine Drexel’s Benevolent Empire,” 93-94.
[8] Krupat, “Introduction,” xiii-xxx.
[9] Amanda West, “St. Patrick Church and the Indian School” Dickinson College Wiki, last modified December 13, 2007, 00:18 [WEB].
[10] Elisabeth Davis, “‘Our Colored and Indian Charges Furnish So Much Amusement for Us’: Catholicism, Assimilation, and the Racial Hierarchy in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 1883–1918,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 91, no. 1 (2024): 47–64. [Scholarly Publishing Collective]
[11] S.B.S., “St. Katharine’s Hall”
[12] Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Comission, “St. Patrick’s Church” marker, Carlisle, PA, 1986.
[13] Shane Oliver, “Hot-Chee Dogs,” Historical Marker Database, last updated July 12, 2022, updated by Carl Gordon Moore Jr., [WEB].
[14] Bulman, “‘Think It, Desire It, Speak It, Act It’; Davis, “‘Our Colored and Indian Charges’”; For more on the Bethel A.M.E. Church’s history see “200 Years of History” Bethel AME Carlisle, 2025, [WEB].
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