Theresa Maxis Duchemin

Theresa Maxis Duchemin (1810-1892) was an American missionary. She opened multiple schools and orphanages in the Michigan and the Pennsylvania area. For her work was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.

Biography

Duchemin was born in 1810 Almeide Maxis Duchemin in Baltimore to immigrant parents. Her father left her family, and Duchemin was raised by her Haitian mother. At the age of nineteen, she was involved in founding Oblate Sisters of Providence, which was the first Roman Catholic religious institute begun for Catholic women of African descent. Her mother, who was also involved with the Oblate Sisters died during an 1831 cholera epidemic in Baltimore. Duchemin subsequently moved to Michigan, to work in conjunction with Louis Florent Gillet. The two would found Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and later schools Michigan and, in 1858, expanding into Pennsylvania. After falling out of favor with Catholic Churches in Michigan, Duchemin moved in with Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart in Canada, where she would spend much of the rest of her life, until returning to Michigan in 1885. She later died in 1892.^[1][2]

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