RAYMOND, CESARINE (1828-1881)

RAYMOND, CESARINE, Sister Raymond of the Religious Hospitallers of St Joseph; superior at Chatham, 1873-79; b. Laprairie, Lower Canada, 22 Oct 1828, d/o Jean-Moïse Raymond and Angélique Leroux; entered religious life, 1857; d. Montreal, 18 Jan 1881.

When the Religious Hospitallers of St Joseph acceded in 1870 to Bishop James Rogers's plea to open a girls' school in Chatham, it was decided that Cesarine Raymond, "the daughter of an old seigneurial family," would be sent from Montreal to serve as "directress of education." She arrived in 1871, but since the school, St Michael's Academy, was under the effective control of Anne Quinlan from the start, her duties as directress were probably not onerous.

In 1873, when Mother Louise Davignon was recalled to Montreal due to illness, Raymond was appointed superior at Chatham. After five very difficult years this "woman of rare culture and accomplished refinement" had to be recalled also due to illness. "I leave my heart in Chatham," she stated, upon her departure in 1879. Less than two years later she was dead, at age fifty-two.