"My mother was the first daughter of an alumna to graduate from The College of New Rochelle, and Jean’s daughter, Carolyn Harnett Spitz ’64, was the first granddaughter to graduate. Another cousin, Margie O’Connor, graduated in 1966, and I graduated in 1967. Nowadays CNR continues to have many multi-generational graduates." Sr. Martha Counihan, OSU Associate Professor & Archivist The College of New Rochelle

Sr. Martha, describe your connections with The College of New Rochelle?

My connection to The College of New Rochelle begins with my great grandfather, William Brosmith, and the College’s foundress Mother Irene Gill, whom he knew when she was at Henry Street in New York City. Since 1873, the Ursulines of St. Teresa’s parish had staffed the girls department of the parish school, and also ran a private academy. In 1883, the Ursulines opened a normal school at St. Teresa’s addressing the need for trained teachers as new immigrant populations brought hundreds of thousands of children into the public and parochial schools of New York City. It is generally believed that the success of the St. Teresa’s teacher training classes inspired Mother Irene to found The College of New Rochelle in 1904.

Mother Irene and some of her community came to New Rochelle in 1896, and bought the Castle in 1897. Lower Manhattan, where St. Teresa’s Academy was located, was a changing neighborhood, and Catholic families were leaving the city for the suburbs and moving uptown. She wanted to found a school in “the salubrious air” of the suburbs, one of many fine features that the village of New Rochelle offered.  

When CNR was founded William Brosmith had prospered, studying law and passing the bar, and he and his wife and family were living in Hartford and he heard about the new college from Mother Irene. His mother and sisters were still living in Manhattan.

My great Aunt Polly (later, Mother Elizabeth Brosmith, OSU) and her sister, Dorothy, came together to CNR from Hartford in 1907 and graduated in 1911. My grandmother, Dorothy, had a brownie camera and she donated her photo album to CNR years ago—they are among the earliest photos of the College. My great aunt entered the Ursulines after graduation, and my grandmother missed her so much that she moved to New Rochelle soon after she was married to be near her.

My mother (Dorothy Anne McEvoy, ‘37) and her sisters, Jean (’38), Peggy (-40), Betty, Mary Lou, [Betty and Mary Lou did not attend CNR] and even the youngest and only boy, Bill, attended the Merici School on campus, however, he refused to continue after first grade, when it moved to North Avenue.

My mother was the first daughter of an alumna to graduate from The College of New Rochelle, and Jean’s daughter, Carolyn Harnett Spitz ’64, was the first granddaughter to graduate. Another cousin, Margie O’Connor, graduated in 1966, and I graduated in 1967. Nowadays CNR continues to have many multi-generational graduates.

Martha Counihan, 1967 Annales

Besides your life here, where else have you lived and worked?

I entered the Ursulines after graduation from CNR with a major in art. I did my masters in art history at the University of Delaware, and I taught art in Wilmington, Delaware. After I completed my master’s thesis on Leland Castle, I taught art and humanities at the St. Joseph’s Ursuline Academy in Malone, New York.

As a CNR student, I had participated in a student volunteer program in Mexico City, so I always retained a great bond with Mexico and returned there numerous times to work as volunteer with other Ursulines. I also spent several vacations and a year working with a pastoral team of Ursulines, Sisters of St. Joseph, Jesuits, and lay people in rural Tabasco, Mexico.

I liked the simple life and ministry of establishing basic Christian communities, and it was an exciting time in the post-Vatican II church to work with this community in Mexico.

 I returned to CNR in 1976 as archivist for the College and got my masters in librarianship at Columbia University.

My Latin American fascination continued, of course, and in 1987 I went to Peru where I lived in Lima and worked with the Maryknoll Sisters who ran a women’s center and social work library. I then spent several happy years working in pastoral ministry in an immense rural parish in the Andes. Again, our aims were to prepare local men and women for pastoral ministry.  We Ursulines lived in the church sacristy, most of the time without electricity.

At the time, Fred Smith, the periodicals librarian at Gill Library, used to send me donated paperbacks that Gill could not use, and I read them by candlelight wrapped in a poncho in the cold nights of those high mountains. I also spent time in Bolivia and in the altiplano of Peru doing pastoral ministry, in rural and very impoverished areas.

When I returned to the United States in 1993, I used my skills as a certified chaplain to do chaplaincy work for six years in hospitals and at Casa Promesa in the Bronx, a long-term care health facility for persons with AIDS.

I returned again to CNR in 2000 and to work with the College’s Archives. In all my work overseas, I have learned how to sweep a dirt floor, take apart and clean a kerosene stove, and I know that wringing out wet sheets keep ones arms from getting flabby, but the greatest challenge I have had has been learning new computer skills. I left CNR when we were doing dial up DIALOG searches in the library and returned to find everything at the College computerized. It has been an amazing (and educational!) journey.

Tell us a little bit about your research on the Castle.

I did a masters in art history and wrote my thesis on Leland Castle at a point when the Ursulines were selling it to the College. I had always been interested in it and knew Leland Castle was a ripe topic for a thesis since no one had done much research on the Castle, and there were many myths and truths to discovered and uncovered. A story that several old nuns told me was of my mother’s visit to her aunt, Mother Elizabeth, soon after my twin and I were born. She carried us in a large basket, and as she was leaving, Mary began to wail and I just looked around. The nuns all joked that this time, Martha had “chosen the better part”. I like to think I was just checking out the Castle.

I continue to research the Castle and Simeon Leland, its original owner. Leland was the Donald Trump of his time. He and his brothers ran a number of successful hotels all over the United States in the 19th and early 20th century. One of my greatest discoveries was an “unidentified” collection of drawings at the Avery Fine Arts Library at Columbia by a Henry Youngling. Youngling was one of the decorative painters who had worked on the Castle and I was able to identify at least one site where he had worked, Leland Castle. Several years later when the “Blue Library” (color of wall hangings in Castle Library) was to be re-papered, the original decorative painting with Leland’s coat of arms emerged. A  generous donor to CNR, Oliver Smalley, paid to have the library walls restored and Avery Library was happy to know of one extant example of Youngling’s work.

What is the most fascinating fact that you uncovered
in your research of the Castle?

It would have to be the Youngling Collection at Columbia and the link to The College of New Rochelle. A more concise “factoid” was debunking two myths: 1) that the Prince of Wales visited the Castle. He attended a fancy dress ball at Leland’s Metropolitan Hotel on an 1860 visit, but there is no mention in the New York press that he came to New Rochelle. 2) that Charles Dickens also visited the Castle. Dickens came to America in 1842 and his first visit preceded the building of the Castle, and the detailed itinerary of his 1872 visit makes no mention of a stop in New Rochelle. In 1872, Simeon Leland was bankrupt and dying.

As the Archivist and the Special Collections Librarian,
what items in Gill Library have the most value?

In your research, what projects for the College
has been particularly satisfying for you?

I was particularly happy to help in preparing information for the College’s Centennial. At the moment,  I am completing a history of the Eastern Province to commemorate the 150 years since Ursulines came to New York City, the origin of what is now the Eastern Province of the Ursulines of the Roman Union. I have been able to uncover some interesting information about Mother Irene’s family and the founding Ursulines. My most thrilling moment was finding online the 1870 US Census listing of Mother Irene’s family including her father—debunking the myth that he had been separated from the family and died in Australia; I have since discovered that he is buried in Calvary Cemetery.