Episode 16: History and Hidden Stories with Reba Weatherford

In this episode of Mildly Amusing, James sits down with Reba Weatherford, archivist and director of the Loretto Heritage Center. Originally from West Virginia, Reba moved to Marion County in 2021 after earning her degrees from Guilford College and St. John’s University in library science and public history.

Reba shares how the Loretto Heritage Center came to be and brings to life some of her favorite stories and artifacts connected to the Sisters of Loretto. She talks about the Sisters’ involvement in Operation Babylift during the Vietnam War and the impact it had, and she highlights notable historical figures connected to local and religious history, including Father Stephen Badin, Father Charles Nerinckx, and Mary Rhodes.

Along the way, Reba explains how being an archivist is a bit like being a detective—you look without context and follow clues to uncover the true story behind the documents and artifacts.

It’s a fascinating look at local history, remarkable lives, and the work that goes into preserving it for future generations. Perfect to listen to while driving, taking a walk, or whenever you have a few minutes to tune in.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Welcome back. This is James Braggens, and this is mildly amusing. Um it's been a a little bit. Uh life intrudes, doesn't it, Amy, sometimes, and and um the best uh our best attempts to adhere to something of a schedule. You know, we just do the best we can, and that's just gonna have to be alright. Anyway, so um very excited today to talk to Reba Weatherford. Reba Weatherford is the director of the uh Loreto Heritage Center. You're gonna learn all about that. That is the history arm, sort of, so to speak, of the Loretto Mother House. Uh it's a museum. If you haven't been, you need to go. It's uh really, really well done. And um she's got an interesting story, her own self, that I think you will enjoy hearing about. And um I knew this was gonna be an interesting day when I was getting ready to come down here and I looked out the bathroom window and there was snow. We've already had eighty degree days just very, very recently, and there was snow, and as far as I know, it's still in the thirties. That is uh that is madness. But anyway, thank you all for being with us and being on my uh Presbyterian journey of discovery of the Loreto Mother House and community. Uh I think this will be our fourth interview with someone talking about Loretta, which has always been interesting to me and figures very heavily in local history. And um anyway, I hope you'll find it interesting and um hope you'll enjoy. Uh, this is James Spraggins, and this is Mildly Amusing. Welcome back. I'm James Spraggins, and this is Mildly Amusing. Our guest this week is Reba Weatherford. And because I've reached the age of official old mandom, um I see somebody's name and I want to say, Who was your granddaddy? Or are your where are your Weatherfords from? Because my family on the Spraggins side started out in Casey County or lived there for a long time before they came here, and they were cheek to jowl with a whole pastel of Weatherfords. Are you related to any of them?

SPEAKER_03 2:28

Probably not.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

All right. That might be the worst opening question of my podcasting career, but we're just gonna proceed. Reba Weatherford is the director of the Heritage Center at the Loretta Mother House, right here in Marion County in Narinks, Kentucky. Um, and uh if you haven't been to the Heritage Center, I highly recommend that you do. It's I was blown away by it, and that's been several years. I probably was there before COVID. Uh, but it I was blown away by it. It is a to me it it it's like Smithsonian quality. Uh the presentation, the artifacts, and the story that it tells, I think is is really, really good. So uh we're gonna start out, Reba Weatherford. We're gonna talk a little bit about you, how you where you come from, what brung you here, and uh then we're gonna you know talk about the Heritage Center. Reba Weatherford, thank you very much for being with us.

SPEAKER_03 3:24

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Absolutely, absolutely. Um so Reba, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? And how did you get here?

SPEAKER_03 3:31

I am from Summers County, West Virginia.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

So what part of the state is that? I I don't know Summers County.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

It's in the southern part of the state.

SPEAKER_02 3:38

Okay. Grundy. No, that's Virginia in it.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

Yeah.

unknown 3:42

Shoot.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Dang, this is my worst podcast ever.

SPEAKER_03 3:45

Um so Summers County is near um the county. No, I just forgot the name of the county. It doesn't matter. But anyway, so Summers County is a really small county.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

You're in witness protection. And your story is totally blown already.

SPEAKER_03 4:00

No, Summers County is pretty small. I my family has lived there since pretty much since the 1700s. And so um my mom moved my brother and I to North Carolina when we were kids. And so we're actually the only my mom is the only outlier. She's the only one that moved away on my on her side.

SPEAKER_04 4:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

But um, my grandmothers were best friends, they grew up across the road from each other. So it's that kind of story. But anyway, so I moved to North Carolina. Yeah, and I lived there most of my life. But I moved here.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

We're part of North Carolina.

SPEAKER_03 4:36

Uh Greensboro.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Oh, yeah.

unknown 4:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

And I went to Guildford College there, which is a nice Quaker college. I know I have a cousin who went to Guildford.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:44

I went there as an adult, not uh not right after high school or anything.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

And then in non-traditional, I believe, is what they call those students.

unknown 4:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

Yeah. Uh and then in 2018, I moved to New York to go to grad school at St. John's University for Library and Information Science.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Big East Champions.

SPEAKER_03 5:04

And then I came here in 2021.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

I have to, you know, I didn't grow up knowing, honestly, this is my intellectual level. I knew nothing really about St. John's except for basketball, big East basketball. But it's like every time I've seen anything about it, it's like it's really a pretty campus. And like it's and it's bigger than you might like it's like 20,000 or something, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 5:25

Yeah, it's it's pretty big.

SPEAKER_02 5:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:27

And it's in the middle of Queens. It's it's kind of difficult to get to because you can't take the train there.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 5:34

So you have to take a bus. It's in it's in Jamaica or Jamaica States, it depends on who you ask.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

But um, what made you go there? What w how was that on your radar?

SPEAKER_03 5:43

So I wanted to go to a school that had I wanted I when I went back to high school, I mean, sorry, when I went back to college as an adult, I was managing a convenience store actually during the day, and I wanted to go back to school at night, but I didn't want to do like business or anything because I thought I don't wanna, I don't want to work all day and then go to school at night, and they're talking about like accounting. So I thought I would just go into history because there were only a couple of programs that you could even major in at night. So I went into history, and then when I was uh Guilford requires, it's a it's a writing-intensive school, so it requires you to do like a very large capstone project to be able to graduate. And when I was doing it, I thought it was more fun doing the research than it was like kind of compiling everything, and I thought, okay, maybe I'll just go to library school and see where it goes. So I wanted to go into a library and information science program that I could do like a dual major. So I have a master's degree in public history and a master's degree in library and information science. There were only a few of those. St. John's was one of them. They offered me a um a graduate assistantship, and so I was able to get part of it funded. Of course, living in New York City is very expensive.

SPEAKER_04 7:03

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 7:04

But I mean, even in Queens. So I lived in in Jamaica, or right outside Jamaica, Queens, and even that was pretty expensive.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

So I mean, it's been a while, like the gentrification of New York, so to speak, has really spread. And it's been doing that for 25 years at least. Uh-huh. Like where now Williamsburg and Brooklyn is Hipsterville, and and then it was already going into Queens 25 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 7:28

Yeah. So Jamaica, Queens is not gentrified um in the same way. I mean, the the college has been there for a long time, and Jamaica's estates was always there.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Um and we know who's from there.

SPEAKER_03 7:40

Yeah. So Queens is kind of interesting because Queens is kind of interesting um because there are neighborhoods that are close close to Manhattan that are like very apartment-centric, but when you get out into Queens City, yeah, outside of like Chinatown, it's mostly homes. Um, and most of them you can't get to by the train. I mean some of them you get to the Long Island train or some the subway, but it's mostly buses and most people have cars.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

You know, it is kind of funny. The last um, maybe or one of the last times I was in New York, you get very far out, and uh so what I was thinking about was like a little bit like between Brooklyn and you know, in Coney Island or something, it's like you almost feel like you're in Louisville, outer regions of Louisville or something, unless just very neighborhood. Until you talk to someone. Until you talk to somebody. You know, I'm not in Kentucky.

SPEAKER_03 8:32

Um so even the Bronx is pretty gentrified now. There are not just neighborhoods close to Manhattan, but there are some pretty gentrified neighborhoods in the Bronx. It is it is kind of an interesting dynamic there. I had a friend who was uh lived in Brooklyn her whole life. She lived in um Bedsty, and that's a pretty gentrified area now. Oh wow. And so she kept telling me, like, you should move to Bedsty, and then she would also say, I hate that all these people have moved into my neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

It's probably Spike Lee's fault. Do the right thing and know where it was based.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

I think so. Yeah. And she says, like, I'm glad we have the Trader Joe's, but so that's yeah, so that was kind of fun.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

But then she goes to stand in line at the Aldi. Um, yeah, that's funny. Well, I mean, that was just gonna happen. It's just I don't know how anybody lives in any neighborhood in New York the cost wise. It's just it's insane. So people got to spread out from Manhattan. Um I always say, you know, I I would never want to live in New York, but if I did, I'd have to be a billionaire, pretty much, to make it tolerable.

SPEAKER_03 9:44

Um it's interesting in a lot of ways. So I lived with roommates. Uh they were all younger than me. I was in my 30s, so that was kind of awkward, but in some ways, You mean because they were younger than you? They were a lot younger than me. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:59

In some ways, it was cheaper living there. I mean, so I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

You're splitting costs.

SPEAKER_03 10:08

Well, you're splitting costs. I obviously had less room, so the quality, I think the quality of living is a little lower, you know, if you're on a budget. But I I had a um the I forget what you call it now, but the like unlimited fare for the train every month. So that only cost$135. You know, now you have a car payment, gas, insurance. I didn't have any of those things there. You know, maybe took an Uber twice a month when I was out too late or something, or the like, you know, I was in like kind of a sketchy neighborhood. But uh it was cheaper in those ways, but of course, you know, there are just a lot of things that are beyond your reach there. Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

And it's just, I mean, we need to move on from this, but it's interesting to me. Um but I love to visit New York. I'll be there next month. But um it's just such a dang hassle. It's I don't know. I don't know how people raise kids there. You know, again, you'd have to be a billionaire.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

It took me an hour and a half to get to work on the weekends.

unknown 11:10

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 11:11

Uh because I had to take two buses and a train, and the trains are all like running on amended schedules on the weekends, and there's always stuff down, and yeah, it was that part was a hassle, but I miss it in some ways. But you know, I left during COVID and you know, the city had kind of shut down, and every like it was sort of opening back up when I left, and um I was living in Astoria when I left, which is uh it's still in Queens, but a little closer to Manhattan, and it's pretty gentrified. And um I was a little sad, but I it hadn't like it lost something, I think, for me during COVID. And now when I go back, it's like, oh, it's kind of back. But it's still sort of not in a way.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

Right, right. Well, you have uh you've had a variety of living experiences.

SPEAKER_03 12:03

I have.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Um you I assume now you live around Loretta.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

I live in Lebanon.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

Oh, you live in Lebanon? You live in town. Okay, all right, very good. Um Well, it's a pretty easy commute, so yeah. Okay, so um you got your master's at St. John's in library science and uh public history. Um then what? Then you left during, you know, you got you got your degree, you left during COVID. Then what were you thinking this is what I'm gonna do now?

SPEAKER_03 12:34

Well, I got my degree during COVID, so I got it in 2020, and every I had just assumed that I would stay in the city when I graduated because obviously there's a lot more opportunity for cultural heritage work there than there is in most places. But all of those institutions had shut down during COVID. And I really needed a job. Like I really had to have work. And so I kind of quickly realized that I was gonna have to leave the city, and I just started applying like a mad person, and um I ended up with this job here at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Oh so you went straight from there to here? I did this.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

This is the only place, I mean, other than some internships and things that I've worked, this is the only uh place that I've worked as an archivist.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

Aaron Powell Well that's that's a hell of a wide net you cast. If you if from Queens, you discerned that that there was a place called Lareto, Kentucky, uh or Narinks, Kentucky. Um how'd you hear about it?

SPEAKER_03 13:28

So there's actually a website that is ran by an archivist, and pretty much all archival openings are found on that one site. And so when archival institutions are hiring, they know to send it to her, but she also pulls them from other places. So I was pretty much just applying for everything that was on that site that looked like it was something that I was qualified for.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

So you've been here a few years. Um so the Loreto Heritage Center is kind of like the museum. It's like the archives and the museum of the long and really interesting history of that Loretto community. And that's not just in Near Inks, but it's like kind of all over the world. They have an office at the United Nations, which I found out through this podcast not too long ago, which is kind of amazing to me. But um what was the it had been going for a few years. It was already, I don't know, I don't remember who started it, but it had it was already up and running by then, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

The museum. Yeah. The museum opened in 2012. So the sisters have had archives in some form or another since about the 1890s. They had a small or like a smaller museum kind of area. I th I I know exactly where it was, but it would be pointless for me to describe it to you now. But it was on the campus. I don't think that it was open to public.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

And nobody knew about it and it gathered dust and so it wasn't really I think it was more for the sisters.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

But around it was around 2008 or might maybe 2010, I believe, that one of the sist like some of them felt the need to open up a museum that would be to the public, and so they started to raise capital for that, raise funds for that. And uh started, I think the construction started in 2010 and lasted for two years, but I could be wrong about that. But it opened in 2012. The building that it opened in was their auditorium for the year academy that had closed in 1918. So it was still being used as an auditorium until they converted it into the museum.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:37

You can see the auditorium. It's still structured a little the same when you go in. Yeah, there's a small set of steps, and that's where most of our stacks are, which is basically our archival materials. Uh and that area's the stage. But they did build a second floor for the offices and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

Okay. So they they made a serious, serious commitment, financial and otherwise.

SPEAKER_03 15:58

They did.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

To to make this thing happen. So what were you brought in to do? You were there to operate it? Were there other like, and we also want to take it in this direction? Like, tell me what your ex their expectations were for you coming in.

SPEAKER_03 16:12

So I was not brought in to operate the museum. Um well this is kind of a long story, but basically until about 2017, the sisters had their own archivist that was a sister. So they had one lay person that worked in the archives as a sort of office assistant, but everyone else that worked in the archives were a member of the community, and their archivist was a sister. In 2017, sister Eleanor Craig was the director at that time, and she I don't exactly know how she would describe it, but I think she saw that we had all these digital records coming in that they didn't really know what to do with. They had all of these collections, the collections were just getting bigger, and she really felt like they needed someone who was professionally trained. Um, and so she sort of led the uh champion to this idea of getting a lay person in as an archivist. So that started in 2017, and they just because of the location, there aren't a lot of archivists in this area. So they pretty much have to be brought in, and um they had a lot of at first they had, I think, some trouble keeping a regular archivist. They hired a contract archivist to do some work. Um, by the time they hired a curator uh to handle their artifact collection and um do their exhibits. And so when I came in in 2021, I was actually coming in to be an assistant to the main archivist. So I was an assistant to the archivist, and then just a few months after I got into that position, actually the archivist became the director, and Sister Eleanor retired to the position of community historian. So then I became the archivist, and then um when there was another opening for director, I applied for that position. But when I so when I came in, I was mostly like processing archives and you know being a docent in the museum and things like that, but none of the sort of administrative duties.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

Okay. This is a a slight tangent, but uh uh I don't want to forget it. A few years ago, a friend of mine, Mason Young, who was a guest on this show, you probably know him, or maybe, um he is a railroad historian. And um he did something in conjunction with the heritage center, but also somehow through the Smithsonian. So when did the Heritage Center start like that's pretty ambitious in my in my view. Uh that when did they start like whose idea was that? That to like partner with you know take opportunities that the Smithsonian had and partner with them?

SPEAKER_03 18:59

I'm not sure exactly whose idea it was because when I first got there, that's when they started mentioning, oh, we're doing this project with the Smithsonian. So originally it was so originally it was supposed to happen in 2020 and then COVID happened. So actually when I got there, the project was supposed to be like completed and done. But then when I it hadn't, so it got pushed back. So I'm not sure. It I think that Susanna Pyatt, who was the curator at the time, I believe that she's the one that wrote the application. So uh Smithsonian does the museums on Main Street, and they basically have these uh different exhibits every year, every few years that kind of float all around the country. And the whole point of it is that when it comes in, it is itself an exhibit, but then also you're able to localize it and do your own sort of exhibit in conjunction with that.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

They partner with the local groups.

SPEAKER_03 19:54

So they partnered with um Mason, with Diane Mattingley at beautiful they partnered with Beautiful Alretto, they partnered with the library, and so when I came in, there were a lot of people in the community already on that committee. There are others too that I can't think of right now.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

I I thought that was really interesting. And um anyway, we have we on a different podcast I used to do, history podcast, we brought in Mason and he talked about it. It's the first time I'd ever knew anything about that kit. Um so what's a typical day like for you working for the uh is there a typical day yet? Not really.

SPEAKER_03 20:26

Um so we're responsible for I'm responsible for processing collections, which that's a whole like processing doesn't make a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Are you just constantly digging back if through the collections and finding things and trying to figure out well, how do I best present this?

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Yeah, so a lot of processing is basically when something comes in, it's just in whatever order it was brought in, and you go through it, figure out what's worth keeping, what's not worth keeping, and then you kind of describe what you have left over, arrange it in a way that makes sense, um, which is usually the way that it came in, but not always, and then you like create a finding aid for it so that you can locate it and other people can locate it when they're doing research. Um a lot of the collections at the Heritage Center were processed by the sister archivists in like the 70s and the 80s, and then things were added to them later, which is really not I it's not that's not the ideal way to process, but it happens. And so we're trying to process, like both reprocess some collections that were processed a long time ago, but are now like the papers are showing signs of deterioration, and then we're also trying to process things that are coming in. Uh, we we obviously run the museum, so there is a part time exhibits coordinator, and she is the one who creates new exhibits. She does like the gallery work and she does some of the preservation work on the art. And then we do doseting work, we run a couple of programs every year, like a couple of public programs. programs. So and then we handle research requests. So those are um given to us either by the community or people outside of the community. Outside of the community it's primarily genealogy requests, but not always. I'm working on a couple of different requests right now. Sometimes we'll get requests to use our photographs from our collection and publications. The a few of the sisters worked for orphanages in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, for example, and they were working um so I don't really know how to talk about this exactly except that do you know what Operation Babylift was? So Operation Babylift was basically the move to get a lot of the children out of Vietnam um in the last in the last days when the you know when America was pulling out. And so the first Operation Babylift was on a C5A plane which is a military plane and it crashed before it really ever left Vietnam. I think it actually might have landed in Thailand but anyway it it like basically went up and then it had like an engine failure it went back down. So they lost um I don't know the exact number that it was a two-story plane so everyone in the bottom part of the plane pretty much everyone died and then most people that were in the top uh half of the plane lived and so that included about 75 orphans that died. They were all they were supposed to be being flown to Presidio Air Force Base in San Francisco and from there they would be adopted out. Now what's crazy to me is that a lot of those children who were older on the top part of the plane they had to get back on a plane the next day. I just and the military and the military personnel and the nurses. Yes. Yeah but anyway so we have a lot of records from Operation Babylift so we get a lot of requests like we this year's really interesting yeah I've um filled requests for the Australian public broadcasting company this year the Japanese public broadcasting company because this was last year was the an or last year that was the anniversary of the Operation Babylift crash.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

Okay. Do you know how exactly did Loreto get involved in that I'm assuming this was a a State Department effort maybe in in different NGOs or whatever or just private groups.

SPEAKER_03 24:23

So Operation Babylift I believe was a state I well that was a State Department effort. But um but they needed partners Yeah it well it so before Operation Babylift we weren't talking about the orphanages there um it's been a while since I went through this stuff so I'm I may have some may not be a hundred percent accurate but this is basically how I remember it. So there was a woman named Rosemary Taylor. She had been a sister she was from Australia but she not a sister of Loretto a sister of a different order and she was in Vietnam just kind of trying to figure out like how she could help basically and she sort of stumbled into these nurseries and orphanages. A lot of the orphanages were run by other nuns from different orders and then she opened up her own nurseries and so I'm assuming that you know there were so sister Mary Nell Gage is still alive. She is a sister of Loretto that went to Vietnam and worked uh at the nurseries and then Sister Susan Carol McDonald is now deceased but she was a nurse. I think Mary Nell Gage she wasn't a nurse she mostly like played with the children and did a lot of the paperwork that they needed to adopt them out. The adoption they eventually opened up a like a nonprofit in Colorado and most of the adoptions were actually facilitated out of Colorado.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Where there's a big Loretto offshoot or satellite or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

Well it wasn't Loretto that opened the it was called uh I believe it was called Friends for all children and that was ran that was opened by Rosemary Taylor and someone else so it wasn't really connected to Loretto. Loreto just worked there. There is another woman her name is Paulette Peterson she was a co-member of Loretto she's a co-member of Loretto now but she was a sister at the time and she also worked in Vietnam I think she ran like a like one of their preschools or something. So in Rosemary Taylor's book it says that they administered about 80% of the adoptions out of Vietnam during that period. Most of the kids went either to the United States or Europe to different uh countries in Europe.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Did you say Rosemary Peterson?

SPEAKER_03 26:41

Rosemary Taylor is what I meant to say. Oh sorry go ahead sorry my brain sorry um so I think it was 80% like about 80% of the adoptions out of Vietnam during the war were actually facilitated by Rosemary Taylor's organization. And so this the sisters of Loretto who worked there, they were basically working under her or alongside her.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Okay. Wow that's a chapter I didn't know about so um so if I I would assume that a lot of the people who come in and see there are just a lot of people who come to Loretto on retreats. I've done a retreat or two there I used one of the cabins and uh but there are a lot of groups that come in so how do you try to get uh locals also who to just like get it in their brain that hey this is something you can do and it's really interesting to come out there.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

Well I think that's hard. Our museum doesn't have a lot of space for temporary exhibits and so I I think to draw a lot of local interest you have to be able to change things out. You gotta change things because they might feel it's like well I went once I don't think pretty regularly right okay we do get a we do get a lot of the tours so when people do the Holy Land tours like churches will get confirmation classes and things like that and then sometimes we'll have people just walk in off of the street. But you're right most of the visitors are um because of the retreat centers or their friends of sisters or you know alumna or children of alumnas alumna of alums of one of their schools we we do a couple of public programs a year. We had an open house two years ago that was just for the Heritage Center where we had people come in we showed uh Father Charles Neering's vestments that we have I think that drew a lot of local interest because everyone you know anyone who's Catholic in this area knows who Neering's was and and there aren't a lot of his vestments on display anywhere else and they're not on display in our museum so that gave people an opportunity like a once in a once in a lifetime maybe not lifetime but you know and then we've done the past two years we've done a family history uh program and then last year we had a quilt show. I think this year we'll do we're gonna do another quilt show in October that will last a week and then we're gonna do another family history day although I haven't quite scheduled that yet.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

Quilts by by local women.

SPEAKER_03 29:12

Just by local women some of them are by sisters. Last year we sourced quilts from the Raywick quilting group and the Calvary quilting group I think this year we're hoping to get some quilts from them. We're also going to get some quilts from people who came to the quilt show and said I have a quilt I'd like to show and then also some quilting clubs in Louisville.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Okay all right you mentioned Charles Nearing's now this is something that I have to always like stop and try to you got you got your Steven Baden over here and you got your Charles Nearks over here. Tell me who these two people were and what their roles are their significance in in in Loretto is.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

So Baden I I think Baden came here around 1794.

SPEAKER_04 30:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 30:03

Um I may have that date a little bit wrong but so Baden was actually the first priest ordained in what was then the United States. Um you may or may not know that Bardstown was the first diocese outside of Maryland. So and it was the center going all the way up to the Great Lakes right like it pretty much huge so when the cat um when the Catholics from England settled in Maryland in the 1600s they had been fleeing uh religious persecution when they got to Maryland uh there was still I think some persecution at any rate they weren't worshiping in churches they were mostly worshiping in their homes so they were they had been doing home worship for generations so then when this area opened up for westward expansion after the war after the Revolutionary war about eight families I think it was eight families eight Catholic families that settled here first and then they kind of Mary's County Maryland in this area they settled along Creeks in this area and then some other other people came to join them a little bit later. So Baden was sent here to minister to the Catholics that had settled in this area and further sent here from where? Do you know um he Baden was the name makes me think he's French. He yes I was gonna say if you didn't ask I would know exactly what he was yeah I think he was French.

SPEAKER_02 31:26

Okay right but he what he wasn't sent here like he was in Europe go to Kentucky wasn't he already based in Kentu uh in the US for some I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_03 31:37

Maybe I'm not I really I'm not um I I probably should know the answer to that question. Okay. That's right. But I don't so I do know that he settled and on the land that Loretto's on now and that he purchased that land it had been called St. Stephen's Farm. He we he either purchased it or it was uh gifted to him uh but he settled there and then he needed help. So Neerx was St.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Stephen's Farm I'm sorry to interrupt but St. Stephen's Farm is what was known what they used to call where they where the Loretto community is now or is it the one you know where St.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

Charles is no the where they are now. Where they are now so um Nearingx was from we say he was from Belgium. Right. I mean he was actually from the Nether he was technically from the Netherlands. Oh um he left basically because of persecution and he I I believe he pretty much immediately came to Kentucky so um I mean he may have been settled in Maryland for just a bit and then he and then he came to Kentucky so his Kentucky came here slightly oh after Baden. Yeah around 1807 Sounds right about 1807. He came around the same time as a group of trappists came. Oh so um so anyway so Nearinx settled on the land that Baden was currently living on which is the land that the sisters are on now. Yeah and they were circuit riding priests so their circuit was huge I mean it went all the way you know all through Kentucky in Tennessee down Missouri up into Indiana and all of those places. I so their commute was even longer than yours in Queens yes it definitely was um and then so near's was uh I think probably maybe a good way to describe it is that he was very like European Catholic and so the people who settled here they weren't very European Catholic because they had been practicing in their homes you know so they they didn't have that um like that that kind of like long history of that the the tradition of the church and so when Nerix came here he knew that he wanted to build churches and so that's why a lot of the you know he spearheaded a lot of the churches being built in this area.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

And he did he build the one in Holy Cross which is the first it kind of had to be didn't he? Pretty sure he was the first Catholic church west of the Alleghenies right when was it built? Yeah it's it's that is known it's in a book in this room I know it too I just Catholic church west of the Alleghenies is my understanding so he must have that one may have been built before he got here.

SPEAKER_03 34:35

I feel like we should Google this 1790s I think it I think that one was already built.

SPEAKER_04 34:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 34:41

But at any rate most of the people who were worshipping were still worshipping in their homes so it's interesting so they he did spearhead a built the building of a lot of the churches and um and then he I think there had been an attempt around 1807 to for a order of women religious. They wanted to have nuns in the area but the convent that they had built burned down and I don't really know much about that. I don't think we know much about that everything the one that's where St. Charles is now no that's later okay wow all right so anyway Nerenx thought that it was important though to have sisters here to do the work that sisters did then which was yeah to teach and you know provide uh prayer and medical and comfort and things like that. And so there were three women who actually wanted to open a little school and he you know they really wanted to open a school it's not clear to me whether or not they wanted to live communally or not and exactly how that worked out. But he did you know he did sort of discuss with them the idea of becoming nuns and I believe he wanted them to go to Europe and be trained as European nuns and they kind of just were not they weren't they weren't they were not about that. And so they purchased they used actually uh one of the original sisters Mary Rhodes she had inherited a slave from her father. Oh yeah Mary Rhodes that's a that's a big name uh we'll I'll let you wax historic about her so they had she had inherited a slave from her father and they sold him in order to fund the land that they then called Little Loretto which was that original convent that was over there near St. Charles. Wow okay all right I'll be damned yeah the whole uh slavery history related to Loretto is pretty pretty interesting to me um I'll be darn okay go ahead that no so so they that began in 1812 so they had a complex over there and then in 1824 by that time nearx was our in Missouri and the sisters had already started to open up other schools and other places but in 1824 they were kind of forced off of that property over there at St. Charles and it's I'm not sure why I've tr I've tried to figure this out and the best that I've found is that um they were expanding St. Mary's College and they wanted the land for that purpose. And so they had the sisters move to the land that they're on now which had been owned by Baden but Baden had been gone for several years. Flaget had lived there some of the some other clergy had lived on the property but by the time the sisters moved there it had been empty for several years. Oh wow okay so they burned their convent so they burned Little Loretto they set fire to everything except for Nirx's cabin and they they said that they didn't want it to have any secular use that's how we why we that's our understanding of why they burned it. It's kind of interesting there's another there was another order of sisters that was formed here in the 1860s they were Franciscans they were actually formed at Gethsemane and um they left here in the 1890s but it I was uh staying with them for a week uh working in their archives assisting them uh with their work and one of them the sisters of St. Francis sorry so they left Kentucky in the 1890s and they moved to Clinton Iowa and that's where they stayed forever and it's funny because the woman the sister who was the president of their order at the time she said to me you know our history says that we burned our convent to the ground too and she said that just never made sense to me and I just didn't I didn't believe it. And then I was at Loretto and I went to your museum and I saw that the Loretto sisters also burned their original convent to the ground and so she said she said so I guess I just then I thought well this must just be some weird Kentucky thing. Yeah it's just some weird Kentucky thing and now I've accepted that that's probably what she's saying if we can't have it nobody can have it.

SPEAKER_02 39:05

Well that's interesting. Yeah it's not a decision they would make now I'm sure but I would think not I would think not yeah well and okay so that's interesting this stuff you talk about how they at at a at a certain time worship was happening in just people's private homes. I mean you've always heard that some wealthy people had guests you know had their own family chapels within their own homes and stuff. But um so there must have the I would assume then that practices maybe got a little less formal for a while and that might have been part of the the tension between these people coming from Europe saying no no no no we gotta I want to send you over there to be trained the right way and so that must have been uh it it must I assume it was like a formality thing. Um that's really interesting. So education was an early early early point of focus for the community. I didn't know until fairly recently that not only did they operate the Academy in Loretto where you are now but they opened up one in Calvary. And it was called the Loretto Academy in Calvary or something I I think it okay and it turns out my Protestant probably Baptist great grandmother from Casey County her family sent her to Calvary to go to school with the nuns. Do you know why they I mean it wasn't like it was that far from Loretto. Do you know why they did that why did they build a whole nother school in Calvary do you know well they just started filling up in Loretto or something I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 40:44

Often they build schools where they were asked to build schools um Calvary because it's so early I haven't I haven't read a lot of the early secondhand literature on it but we really don't have much firsthand material from Calvary other than our ledger books which list the account I mean we have all of the I don't we don't have all of them but we have quite a few account ledgers from that school which tell us who went there and when they went there and we even have in some cases grades that were recorded for for pupils there. But in terms of the administrative records that would uh be more explanatory in saying why they went there we those those don't really we don't really have those so it's hard for me to know exactly why I think if you were to read I think it says something about it in the book Catholicity in Kentucky but I don't really exactly remember what it says. So um but somebody could come to the heritage center so the you can find out a little bit about this right they could yes so also you know you say it was in Calvary the sisters say it was in Holy Mary's by the rolling fork so on the rolling fork. So I'm always curious if the name Calvary the the town Calvary actually was named after the school so the the when the school was there the town was in Calvary it was Loretto. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 42:18

Loretto's only called Loretto because of the railroad right like it was the for whatever reason the railroad didn't go straight to the St.

SPEAKER_03 42:29

Stephen's Farm or whatever it went where Loretto is now and then when the PO decided to name the the town became called Loretto and there was some deal where the sisters were like well we want our PO to be called Loretto because Narings has its own POM so maybe that was the kind of the same reason that Calvary got called Calvary because of Yeah maybe um so they had uh several different kinds of schools you know they would have the academy schools which were primarily intended for middle upper middle class or uh more wealthy students and then they they also taught in parochial schools and then they would run public schools as well. You know sometimes a person went to a student would be at an academy and she might not be you know she might have been an orphan or she um you know her family might have had a relationship with the sisters and so she ended up at the academy school most of the academy schools were girls schools. In fact I think all all all of them that I'm aware of were but there might have been some that weren't um but basically the parochial schools you know those were run um the sisters taught there and they might have have had administrative duties there but those were usually owned by the diocese. The public schools were a weird you know partnership often between the uh the church and the sisters and just like local community members. And then the academies The the academies, the sisters usually owned the academies and they usually owned the property that the school was on and those were incorporated schools. They were incorporated by the sisters. And so the money, often the money that came into the academies was used to fund their endeavors, you know, in these parochial and public schools that where there wasn't very much money coming in.

SPEAKER_02 44:22

Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_03 44:23

They taught a lot of non-Catholics though.

SPEAKER_02 44:25

My great-grandmother. Yeah, because they were good schools. Oh, they must have been. Yeah, it kind of. It's remarkable. They would send them their kids from uh, you know, I don't know how many days it took by horse to get to there from you know the big South Fork in Casey County. But so I wanted to get back also Mary Rhodes. Tell me, tell me about her. Who was she? There's a Rhodes Hall still in over there. Tell me about Mary Rhodes.

SPEAKER_03 44:50

So Mary Rhodes was one of the founding sisters of the order. She um she came from Maryland. Her I believe her her father was already living here with his second his second wife. Um and her mother had died. I think that's right. Um, anyway, and so she helped found the order along with two other women, and um Christina Stewart and Ann Havern. And her sister Ann Rhodes was a very early sister, and I believe she was the first president to of the order. I mean the first mother superior of the order. She died not long after uh she was put in that elected into that role.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

Okay, all right. So uh she's obviously very like a founding figure. Um what was she? Was she a was she a mother superior or what was she?

SPEAKER_03 45:46

No, she was just one of the foundresses.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

She was just one of the foundresses.

SPEAKER_03 45:50

I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_02 45:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 45:51

Um, so we don't have a lot of information on the early sisters. There was a fire in the convent in the 1850s, and most likely a lot of those early administrative records were burned at that time. I know after the fire, they basically got together and tried to make lists of sisters, you know, like, do you remember this person? Do you remember that person? And they found scraps of scraps of information, and that's how they were kind of able to cobble together a lot of those early happenings. Like in in truth, most of what we know about the early sisters uh were is pulled from books that were written, you know, around that period or shortly after that period.

SPEAKER_02 46:32

Yeah, which is unfortunate. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:34

And a lot of it depended on memory, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:36

Right. Wow. Um so a couple of things before we wrap up, I want to talk about um what what are some of talk to me about some of the notable artifacts that you guys have that that maybe you discovered or that were there or you they were already on display that people are gonna go that people seem like drawn to when they walk in. Tell me some of the things that you all have in your collection that are really interesting.

SPEAKER_03 47:02

So I I don't always I deal more with the paper documents, although I oversee all of the.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Well, I would include that. I mean sure.

SPEAKER_03 47:12

So we do have we have a couple of interesting things. We have a hair sculpture that was created from locks of hair of women who were students at Bethlehem Academy, which was in St. John near Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Okay. That's always people always really enjoy seeing that.

SPEAKER_02 47:32

Um A hair sculptor. What does it look like?

SPEAKER_03 47:35

It looks like hair and it's made into like a little little flowers.

SPEAKER_02 47:39

Oh, okay. Yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_03 47:41

You can go online and see everything in our collection.

SPEAKER_02 47:43

You can go online and see your collection of a lot of things. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03 47:47

Pretty almost everything is photographed online. So you can just go.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

It's probably an ongoing process too, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 47:54

A little bit, yeah. It should be done. We should actually be done this year. Um not everything. Sorry. You cannot see every piece of paper. You can see every artifact in our artifact collection. Okay. Um, but the not the papers. Right. I I should have been more clear about that.

SPEAKER_02 48:10

But um, where did they go to find this?

SPEAKER_03 48:12

Where is the on our website? You could just Google Loreto Heritage Center. It'll take you to the website, and then you just click on explore our collections. Gotcha. But so there are a lot of kind of cool things like that from the schools. Um, little there are drawings from Calvary Academy that I really like. Uh there's I think there's ones of like a cat and ones of a duck. Those are kind of fun.

SPEAKER_04 48:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:34

The sisters kept annals um from their schools. So annals are basically like a record of daily life. They kept them at the convent. I I think they were ordered to keep them. So I think that was a rule. Um, they were handwritten, and then later a lot of them were typed, and the original handwritten copies were unfortunately tossed. So we don't have a lot of the original, original annals, but we do have the you know, a lot of the typed record, which is always got some really interesting stories in it. Like there was a fire in um one of their school, I think in Kansas City, uh, on Halloween, they were doing like a Halloween day celebration, and some of the uh some of the students were dressed like um like Eskimos and they had these costumes on, and the costumes were flammable, and so they had these candles, and one of the girls went up in flames, and the other girls went running toward her to um put her out, and of course, then their costumes also went up in flame, and I I believe three girls died in that fire. So always When was this? Roughly 19, I th it was in the early 1900s. I forget. I I think I want to say 1913, but I may be wrong.

SPEAKER_04 49:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:51

Um, and so there's all kinds of little, you know, little stories like that that come up. I my favorite thing to show is we do have a box. It's um it's like a little chest. It's about a foot, you know, a foot um long and you know, half a foot wide, and it's got a lot of relics from Nerenx in it. So it's got his toenail and it's enshrined in a little um frame.

SPEAKER_02 50:18

And it has where my family will keep my toenails when I pass. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 50:22

It has like a tooth, it has um some bones and a box. And I like to show that to people because well, everyone gets to see that stuff. Um the statue, so Baden's house, not his original log house that he built there, but his brick house that he built in 1816.

SPEAKER_02 50:40

Which is still there, right?

SPEAKER_03 50:42

It is still there. Yeah. So there is a statue of Baden outside of the house. Um and there's a kind of cool story that goes with that statue. So Baden, I always forget the order of how he did this.

SPEAKER_02 50:53

That's the one right in the circle in front of um Sister Jean Duber's studio. No, Baden's nearings. See? I'll never tell you.

SPEAKER_03 51:03

So Baden's statue is beside his his house.

SPEAKER_02 51:07

The brick house.

unknown 51:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 51:09

So Baden um Baden left here. Baden, I I'm I can't exactly remember when he left Kentucky, but I think it was around it had to be after 1816.

SPEAKER_04 51:19

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 51:19

I think it was around 1818 or something. He went up to up to Indiana and he bought land in South Bend, Indiana, and then he later sold that land um to the Jesuits. And so then he went back to Europe. He died in Cincinnati and he was interred in Cincinnati.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

Oh, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_03 51:38

Yeah. So the land that he bought in South Bend, that became Notre Dame University. And when Notre Dame was opening, they wanted to, or Notre Dame was building a replica of his law cabin, and they wanted him interred under the cabin. And so Baden had supposedly said that he had wanted his heart to stay at Loreto on St. Stephen's Farm. And that didn't happen, of course, because he was interred in Cincinnati. So when they moved his body from Cincinnati to Notre Dame, they actually sent his leg bone to the Archdiocese of Louisville. And the Archdiocese, and that was around 1919, I believe, and the Archdiocese they um enshrined it in a statue, and then they had the statue, and then they gave the statue to Loretto. And so that statue was put up in Loretto. Now the original statue, it fell apart like years ago, and it was replaced with a resin cast of it.

SPEAKER_04 52:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 52:40

Um, and the bone was put back in it. So there is actually a leg bone in that statue. I've seen photos of it because I believe Sister Jeannie Duber's the one that did that replaced the the original statue with the resin.

SPEAKER_02 52:52

Okay, this was like 20 years ago. I kind of vaguely remember this, right? Okay.

SPEAKER_03 52:55

Yeah, and so there are pictures of the bone, and you know, so I've seen the photos of it. It's been a long time and I can't find the photos now.

SPEAKER_02 53:01

I don't remember where I saw them, but I'm not Catholic. Um do you understand the tradition of the relics that goes way back? It's deep in the Catholic history. Was it kind of my I'm just guessing? Okay, I asked you a question and then I immediately started answering, so I'm sorry, that's really rude. But uh it was a way to get pilgrims to come to your to come to your church or what you don't know?

SPEAKER_03 53:28

I don't know. Okay. Um I I was born and baptized Catholic, and then my parents got divorced. My dad was Catholic, my mom was not really very Catholic. Okay so I didn't have a Catholic upbringing. Um I did go to a Catholic college for a master's degree, but that was just uh that was not intended. It wasn't not because it was Catholic.

SPEAKER_04 53:49

Right.

SPEAKER_03 53:50

So I kind of have to learn these things as I go. Now, Father Pierre Giorgio, who um is at St. Rose Priory in Springfield, he is very knowledgeable about relics, and he's a lot of information on them, he's a lot of information on the saints. And when I need um advice or when I and he, you know, reads Latin. And so when I need information on relics, I always go to him.

SPEAKER_01 54:20

Uh he's said he's in he's where he's at St.

SPEAKER_03 54:22

Rose Priory. St.

SPEAKER_01 54:23

Rose in Springfield. Pierre Giorgio.

SPEAKER_03 54:26

He has the Washington County name. I think he's from New York. Um, but he has so much information on relics, and so yeah, I always call him and I'm like, I have a I have a relic question for you. And he'll come and look at relics. He's given two talks on the relics that we have. We have a lot of relics, but also because I don't play with the art, like I'm I don't work with the artifact collection as much. You don't play with the relics. I don't play with them there very often. Okay. I don't um I'm not as studied on them as, say, our uh archives coordinator, who is the one who's really gets in the weeds with the artifact collection in a way that I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 55:06

Right. Okay. If a person wants to go to the Loreto Um Heritage Center, what are your hours?

SPEAKER_03 55:13

It's they're pretty limited. So we are open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from one to four. And then we are open other times by appointment.

SPEAKER_04 55:22

Four by appointment, okay.

SPEAKER_03 55:24

If you're wanting to do research, that's if you're wanting to visit the museum. If you're wanting to do research, that always requires an advance appointment.

SPEAKER_02 55:31

So, okay, I'm kind of interested that you've kind of piqued my interest. So um, if I come to the Heritage Center and I provide you with the name of my great-grandmother from Casey County, if you have anything, I want to know what her name records were, her grades. I want to know how scholarly she was. No, but if if would you all have any information like when she was there?

SPEAKER_03 55:53

So things aren't really indexed that way. Okay. Um We have the ledger books from Calvary, and you could look through those and try to find her name. But all of the ledger books from Cal Calvary are digitized and they're available online and they are name searchable. So you we could theoretically, when we get off of here, I could just open my phone and we could do it right now. Um so for that, you don't unless you wanted to see the original record, which we'd be happy to show you the original book. And some people like to do that. Yeah. Um we you know, that's available. That's the same.

SPEAKER_02 56:27

Like it would be interesting to me. I don't know if there would be anything with her handwriting on on it.

SPEAKER_03 56:32

Probably not. Because the ledger books were kept by the sisters.

SPEAKER_02 56:37

Or because she was illiterate. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 56:39

Well, not if she went to Illoretta's.

SPEAKER_02 56:41

Well, unless she wasn't illiterate for long. That's right. That's right. Uh well, that's wow, that's really something. So you've given me some stuff I'm gonna dig into. Um is there anything that I didn't ask you, and you said, Boy, I really hope he asked me about this. Or even better, is there anything you wish I hadn't asked you? I gotta hope he stays away from this. Because that's really the stuff I want to talk about. I always tell people like, I just want to bring you right up to the point of termination.

SPEAKER_03 57:10

Um we have I I'm always finding interesting things when I dig through the collection. So the sisters were in a lot of different places. They're still associated with schools that are open now. Um Josh said El Paso the other day, but it I mean he said Santa Fe, but it's El Paso. Okay. So there's still one in El Paso, there's one in Colorado, one in Missouri. Um, and we're we still interact with the schools and we are always getting information from them. But we have about 30 different languages represented in the archives. We have all kinds of things that I have to do a lot of like Google lensing to even be able to figure out what it is. And so our jobs are always interesting. Being an archivist um is a little bit like being a detective in a way, or like a like like forensics, because you're basically sometimes you're looking at something without context and you're trying to use the clues that are in it to, you know, figure out what its story is. And so that's kind of our job is to tease the stories out of these like bits of information that we have.

SPEAKER_02 58:16

So you said that you don't have a lot of room for like temporary exhibits and things. Um is there any thought to expanding in some way, whether it means on the grounds, or we would do like a pop-up exhibit at the Marion County Library or the Herit or whatever, or a nice little history museum we have down here run by Amy Osborne?

SPEAKER_03 58:40

Uh well, that's not something that we're looking at at present. Uh, we obviously we did the Smithsonian thing a couple of years ago. That worked well. I haven't seen another museums on Main Street exhibit that I think we have thought would really like speak to this area. But we are we have a couple of galleries that we do change out pretty regularly with art, and you know, we're always looking for more opportunities to work within the community. And so if someone has an idea, they can come to me. I'm on the board of the Marion County Historical Society, so that relationship already exists. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 59:19

Gotcha. Okay. Speaking of which, are you all I think you're having an event this Friday, is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 59:25

Members.

SPEAKER_02 59:26

Oh, I'm sorry. If you're not a member, I forget I said that. Uh but you should become a member.

SPEAKER_03 59:32

I will be going over the numbers. Very good. Because I'm the treasurer, which is something I know nothing about. Excellent. Excellent.

SPEAKER_02 59:39

Okay, well, great. Um Reba Weatherford, thank you so much for for coming on. And you know, it always it amazes me a little bit, you know, once you get this conversation spinning, it it it just kind of takes its own takes its own path. And I really been interested and enjoyed the whole the whole of it. Um so thank you so much for for coming in and talking to us, and I'd like to get you back sometime.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:06

Yeah, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:07

Absolutely, absolutely. Uh this is James Spraggins, and this is this has been mildly amusing.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:15

Not everyone needs a full-time or even part-time assistant. Sometimes you need help for a few hours, for a week, or once in a blue moon. That's where I come in. I'm your personal assistant for both creative and organizational support. Hi, I'm Amy Osborne of Main Assist. Local, reliable, and here when you need me.