Virgil Horace Barber

Virgil Horace Barber (b. at Claremont, New Hampshire, 9 May1782; d. at Georgetown, D.C., 25 March1847) was an American Jesuit.

Life

His father was Daniel Barber; like his father, Virgil was a Catholic convert. He himself said that the first step leading to his conversion was the reading of "A Novena to St. Francis Xavier", a book belonging to an Irish servant girl, while he was principal of the Episcopalian Academy at Fairfield, New York. This raised doubts concerning his Protestant faith, which his bishop, Dr. Hobart, and other Episcopalian ministers could not solve for him.

During a visit to New York City, in 1816, he called on Father Benedict J. Fenwick, S.J., with the result that he resigned his Episcopalian charge at Fairfield, and went to New York, where he and his wife Jerusha (b. New Town, Connecticut, 20 July, 1789) were received into the Roman Catholic Church with their five children, Mary (b. 1810); Abigail (b. 1811); Susan (b. 1813); Samuel (b. 1814); and Josephine (b. 1816). At first he opened a school in New York, but this lasted only seven months. Both he and his wife determined to enter religious life, he in the Society of Jesus, and she in the Visitation Order. Under the direction of Fenwick, in June 1817 they set out for Georgetown, D. C., where Barber and his son Samuel went to the college of the Jesuit Fathers, and his wife and the three oldest girls were received into the Visitation convent. The youngest child, Josephine, then ten months old, was taken care of by Father Fenwick's mother.

The superior at Georgetown, Father John Grassi, S.J., shortly after sailed for Rome and took Barber with him as a novice. Barber remained there a year and then returned to Georgetown, where he continued his studies until December, 1822, when he was ordained a priest at Boston. After his ordination he was sent to his old home, Claremont, New Hampshire, where he built a church and laboured for two years. He then spent some time on the Indian missions in Maine, and was after recalled to Georgetown College, where he passed the remainder of his days.

Nearly three years after their separation, 23 February, 1820, husband and wife met in the chapel of Georgetown convent to make their vows in religion. She first went through the formula of the profession of a Visitation nun, and he the vows of a member of the Society of Jesus. Their five children, the eldest being ten and the youngest three and a half years old, were present. Mrs. Barber had been admitted into the Visitation convent on the twenty-sixth of July, 1817, taking the name of Sister Mary Augustine. Her novitiate was one of severe trials, as well on account of her affection for her husband as on account of her children, who were a burden to the community then in a state of poverty. She served in the convents of Georgetown, Kaskaskia, St. Louis, and Mobile, where she died 1 January, 1860.

Mary, the eldest daughter, entered the Ursuline convent, Mt. Benedict, near Charlestown, Massachusetts, as Sister Mary Benedicta, 15 August, 1826, and died in the convent of the order in Quebec, 9 May, 1844. Abigail, Susan, and Josephine also became Ursulines. The first died in Quebec, 8 December, 1879, and Susan in the convent at Three Rivers, Canada, 24 January, 1837. Samuel, the son, graduated at Georgetown College in 1831 and immediately entered the Society of Jesus. After his novitiate he was sent to Rome, where he was ordained. He returned to Georgetown in 1840, and died, aged fifty years, at St. Thomas's Manor, Maryland, 23 February, 1864.

References

*De Goesbriand, Catholic Memoirs of Vermont and New Hampshire (Burlington, Vermont, 1886);
*Lathrop, A Story of Courage (Boston, 1894);
*John Gilmary Shea, The Catholic Church in the United States (New York, 1856);
*____, Memorial History of Georgetown College (Washington, 1891);
*U. S. Cath. Hist. Soc. Records and Studies (New York, October, 1900)

Category;American Jesuits