Lathrop, << LAY thruhp, >> Rose Hawthorne (1851-1926), was the main founder of a Roman Catholic nursing order of nuns. She set up the order in New York City to aid poor cancer patients and also established two nursing homes for cancer victims.
Rose Hawthorne, the daughter of the famous author Nathaniel Hawthorne, was born in Lenox, Massachusetts. She married George Parsons Lathrop, a writer, in 1871 and became a Catholic in 1891. She began working with cancer patients after taking a nursing course in 1896. That same year, she opened a small infirmary for cancer patients in a New York City slum. Lathrop’s husband died in 1898. That year, she and Alice Huber, an associate, formed a nursing society, the Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer. They also opened a home in New York City for cancer patients. Lathrop took her first vows as a nun in 1900 and final vows in 1909. Also in 1900, she and Huber founded the nursing order, the Dominican Congregation of St. Rose of Lima. Lathrop became known as Mother Mary Alphonsa. She opened another nursing home in 1901. She wrote a book about her father called Memories of Hawthorne (1897).
