The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-06-16
HOW ETHAN ALIENS DAUGHTER BECAME
 CATHOLIC SISTER.
Tradition Among Old New Englanders of Her En-
 countering St. Joseph.

I This account of the entrance into
 the Catholic sisterhood of the daugh-
 ter of Ethan Allen, is given by James l A. Rooneg, LL..D.. of Brooklyn, N. Y., | who is writing a, history of the Cath oltc church The writer was the first editor of the Connecticut Catholic: The first native New Englander to
 become a, nun was Fanny Allen, a l daughter of Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga, and of his wife, Frances
 Montressor. Though brought up and educated in an anti-Catholic environ
 nent she was converted to the faith 1 in her twenty-thir year and two years later devoted herself to the re- 1igious life, taking the VOWS of a Hospital Sister of St. Joseph in the convent of the Hotel Dieu. Montreal, May IS, 1811, as noted in our Cath olic Chronology.
 She was born in Sunderland, Vt, on Nov. 13s 17S4, in a house built by
 her father. When three years old the family removed to the then will lage of Burlington and settled on tract of land granted to Ethan Allen and his brother Ira, also Revolu- tfonary patriot, on which are now located Fort Ethan Allen and the Fanny Allen hospital. There her father died Feb 12, 17S9, and the widow moved to the home of her mother, a Mrs. Wall, at Westminster
 y pr. Jabez Penniman. Here Fanny lived until her seventeenth year and here it was that according to a state ment made by her to the sister in Montreal and preserved in their an- na1s, she was granted the privilege of an apparition of St. Joseph.
 The record says then when twelve years old while walking on the bank of river she was attacked by a monster of extraordinary size and horrid aspect and was rescued by a
 man of venerable and striking ap- pearance, wearing a brown cloak and carrying a staff. He took her by the hand saying in kindly voice: My child, what are you doing here; hasten away.'' She related the incl sought to identify her deliverer in vain until years later after her con- version she recognized him in pie ture of St. Joseph in the chapel of Hotel Dieu.
 Fanny had never heard much about Catho1icity except what was deroga- tory to the faith and when twenty three years old she secured the con- sent of her parents to go to Montreal, ostensib1y to finish her education but really to learn from first hand sources something of that faith which she had always heard ma1igned. Before starting her mother insisted she should be baptized and the Rev. Daniel Barber. then an Episcopal minister but later a convert, per formed that ceremony. She was ir1- structed and admittd to hte church against all the objections of her fam ily and her mother brought her. home and tried to wean her from her de- termination to join a religious com munity
 When it was seen that nothing could shake her resolution her moth a1- fiT7<a1 1Iyr her back to Montreal. To ask guid- ance in her choice of a community they visited many of the churches and chapels for which the old city is noted, among others the chapel of the Hotel Dieu of the Hospital Sis there was a painting of the Holy Family and gazing fixedly at the fig ure of St Joseph Fanny, pointing it out to her mother. said: 'tThere is the very man who saved me from the smonster when I was a child in West
 minister, the foster father of Our Lord, and here with these Sisters of St Joseph I will spend the rest of my life"
 She entered the novitiate Sept. 2e, 1908, and made her rolemn VOWS on May IS, 1811- On this occasion many of her American and Protestant friends thronged the chapel of the Hotel Dieu to witness the novel spectacle of the daughter of Ethan Allen being clothed in the habit of "a Catholic num- She spent the re- maining years of her life as a devout religious and dying Sept. 10, 1s19. was buried in the chapel of her con vent home.
 To commemorate the memory in her own native state of this i1lustrious daughter of an ilfustrious sire, a con vert. and the first New England wo- man to become a nun five Sisters of St Joseph from Montreal arrived in Burlington in 1894 and established the Fanny Allen Hospital in Winooski Park.