Description

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (1851-1926) was an American Roman Catholic nun and social worker. Born in Lenox, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia, she was educated in London, Paris, Rome and Florence. She married author George Parsons Lathrop in 1883; the two of them converted to Roman Catholicism in 1891. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was well known for her service near and within New York City, caring for impoverished cancer patients by founding St. Rose's Free Home for Incurable Cancer in the Lower East Side. After the death of her husband (from whom she had separated before moving to New York City) in 1898, she became a nun, and as Mother Mary Alphonsa, she founded a community of Dominican nuns, now known as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne. She was awarded an honorary A.M. from Bowdoin College in 1925. Among her famous works are: Along the Shore (1888), A Story of Courage (with George Parsons Lathrop) (1895), and Memories of Hawthorne (1897).