To My Magnificent Agents, Staff, and Friends:
On the corner of Prytania and Camp Streets in New Orleans is a small park called “Margaret Place.” Dominating the postage-sized plot of ground is a statue of a plain and matronly looking woman seated in a chair with her arm around a small child. Adorning the base of the statue is a plaque that reads simply “Margaret.” Although there is nothing that one can discern by simply viewing the park and the statue that would reveal who the lady was or why this monument was erected, if you do a little research, you’ll find that there is historical significance attached to both the statue and the woman. It was the first erected in the United States to honor a woman. So what was it about this woman that she should merit such honor?
When the statue was commissioned shortly after her death, it was said that everyone in New Orleans knew “Margaret.” As such, there was no need for the sculptor to add any biography. But now, over a hundred years later, nearly everyone who stumbles onto Margaret Place asks, “who was she?”
The lady’s full name was Margaret Gaffney Haughery (pronounced HAW-a-ree). She was born in 1813 and died in 1882. As it is for all of us, those dates are merely bookends. It is what lies in between those dates wherein we create a life worth remembering, and Margaret certainly did that.
This remarkable woman was born into poverty in Ireland. When she was a small child of five, her parents, in a desperate effort to escape destitution and persecution, immigrated to America. The family took up residence in Baltimore, Maryland. But Margaret’s struggles didn’t end with her arrival in the “land of milk and honey.” In fact, they were just beginning.
A few years after arriving Margaret was left an orphan when both her parents succumbed to disease. Having no relatives in this new land, Margaret, now nine, was homeless and soon alone as her older brother Kevin disappeared and was never heard from again. A woman who made the overseas crossing with Margaret’s family heard of her plight. This woman, who had had lost her husband to the same yellow fever as Margaret’s parents, took Margaret in. She sheltered and cared for little orphan in her home. There Margaret remained for some years, where she worked for her keep. In fact she may have been little more than a servant. Margaret received no formal education. She never learned to read or write. When old enough, she went into domestic service, which was the norm for Irishwomen in Baltimore at that time.
In 1835, at age 21, Margaret married Charles Haughery. He was not a well man, so to escape the cold climate up north, Margaret persuaded him that a move south might be therapeutic for his bad health. He agreed and they left Baltimore and reached New Orleans on November 20 of 1835. For a time Charles’s health showed a slight improvement but it was short-lived and medical advice recommended a sea journey. Charles decided to return to Ireland, his native land, but his trip was delayed by several months pending the birth of the couple’s first child, a girl. They named her Frances.
Eventually, Charles made the voyage but after some months Margaret received word that he died shortly after reaching his destination. This was a cruel blow but worse was to follow, for within a few months infant Frances became seriously ill and died. This was the second time that Margaret’s family was wiped out, yet she was just 23 years of age. As she herself said, “My God! Thou hast broken every tie: Thou hast stripped me of all. Again I am all alone.”
Margaret was all alone in the world, and poor, but she was strong, and knew how to work. Despite her tragedies, or because of them, Margaret was determined to do something in her life to help the plight of widows and orphans — something she understood very well. However, she herself was destitute, uneducated and illiterate, a penniless immigrant woman on her own in New Orleans.
She first found work in the laundry of the St. Charles Hotel. All day, from morning until evening, she ironed clothes. Every day, as she worked by the window she saw motherless children from the orphan asylum nearby, working and playing about. After a while, great plagues of sickness fell upon the city, and so many mothers and fathers died that there were more orphans than the asylum could care for. Margaret stepped in. While still working as a laundress, she went to Sisters of Charity who ran the asylum and told them she was giving them part of her wages, and she intended to work for them, besides. Early on she became acquainted with, and worked closely with a nun named Sister Regis. At that time in New Orleans, the Sisters of Charity under the guidance of Sister Regis managed the Poydras Orphan Asylum. Margaret eventually left her position at the hotel in order to devote her full effort to aiding and caring for the orphans. She was employed in the asylum and when the orphans were without food she bought it for them from her earnings. Her first job was the collection of food from any available source.
Margaret discovered that she had a talent as an effective and resourceful solicitor of funds and food for the orphans. She was so successful that several other facilities were opened. She was rewarded for her efforts with a position in the administration of the orphanages. With money Margaret saved from her wages, to provide milk for the orphans she purchased two cows. With this, she bought a little delivery cart and established a dairy She sold fresh milk throughout the Vieux Carré and the Garden District. She carried her milk to her customers in the little cart every morning, driving her milk cart from door to door; and as she went, she begged the leftover food from the hotels and rich houses, and brought it back in the cart to the hungry children in the asylum. In the very hardest times that was often all the food the children had to eat.
Although Margaret devoted so much of her time and effort to providing for the orphans, feeding the poor, and giving generously to charity, her personal wealth also began to grow. Over time, Margaret would became the owner of many businesses, but one of her first became the most prosperous. It was a bakery business. It became an overnight success, and it is from this that she made the greater part of her fortune. The bakery was named Margaret’s Steam and Mechanical Bakery, but Margaret began advertising her products by her first name only. (Hence as in the plaque on her statue years later, everybody knew her by her first name). The bakery sold “Margaret’s Bread” and she became known as the “Bread Woman of New Orleans.”
All the asylums in New Orleans were supplied with bread from her bakery at such a low price as to be virtually free. Even the winos and beggars of the city converged daily on bakery. Margaret would not turn them away. She always gave them a loaf of bread but cut it in half so that they could not sell it to buy alcohol. Seated in the doorway of the bakery in the heart of the city, Margaret became an integral part of its life, for besides the poor who came to her continually, she was consulted by the people of all ranks about their business affairs, her wisdom having become proverbial. “Our Margaret” the people of New Orleans called her. The locals said she was masculine in energy and courage but gifted with the gentlest and kindest manners.
At the age of 69 Margaret contracted an incurable disease, the exact nature of which is not recorded. She lingered many months under the care of her friends, the Sisters of Charity. People of all classes and denominations visited her in this her last illness. The aristocratic of New Orleans knelt at her side. Pope Pius IX sent his blessing and a crucifix. She died on February 9, 1882. Her body was taken to St. Vincent Infant Asylum, where it was embalmed and laid in state. The funeral took place on the following Saturday morning. Her was death announced in the newspapers with blocked columns as a public calamity, and the city newspapers were edged in black to mark her death. Her obituary was printed on the front page of The Times-Picayune newspaper, the main paper in the city.
Shortly after her death a group of civic and community leaders met to discuss what they might do to keep Margaret’s memory alive for the ages, they said, “She was the a mother to the motherless. She was a friend to those who had no friends. She had wisdom greater than schools can teach. We will not let her memory go from us.” So they commissioned a statue of her, just as she used to look, sitting in the door of her bakery with her arm around one of her beloved orphan waifs. So there it stands today – the statue simply named “Margaret.”
And now we know who Margaret was – an illiterate and common lady who turned tragedy into triumph by dedicating her life to the principle that it is through giving that we receive and, by doing so, one is worthy of both honor and remembrance for the ages. In knowing the answer to the question of who she was, we can now turn the question back to ourselves. Who are we?
“Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God – the rest will be given.” – Mother Teresa
Have an AWE-full weekend!
Bill