Jesuit Oregon Province Archives

Charls Chapman, SJ, Women Religious Orders Collection

During the 1940s, Fr. Charls Chapman, S.J., conducted a thorough survey of as many American and Canadian women religious orders as he could find. Intending to produce a reference compendium, Fr. Chapman used a questionnaire to assemble each one’s institutional history, membership requirements, special ministries, geographic locations and unique religious habit. To supplement this descriptive text, he also solicited photo portraits, to be able to graphically illustrate the habit design of each order’s professed and novice members. The resulting photograph collection is a comprehensive view of this facet of North American Catholic religious history at its high water mark.

About 80% of the images are individual women posing their order’s distinctive habit design, not only for professed and novice sisters, but in many cases for its postulants and lay sisters as well. The remainder depicts certain orders’ ministries, community life and assembled members.

Though his work was never published, Fr. Chapman’s materials were heavily used by George C. Stewart Jr. in his book Marvels of Charity: A History of American Sisters and Nuns (1994).