By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
After years of knowing her only by rudimentary biographical facts (see: Mary Leonard story part one), I finally “heard” my dearly departed Irish great aunt Mary Leonard’s voice in a series of short stories written by Alice Beaumelle “Babbie” Brainerd Nelson, someone Mary tended as a young child (see: Mary Leonard story part two).
Voice, however, is more than mere words, talking, or sound. In literature, for example, voice also refers to someone’s emotions, attitude, tone, and point of view. After hearing one aspect of Mary Leonard’s voice in Babbie’s writing, I also started to decipher Mary’s strong, steadfast, quiet voice in the everyday events of her life, many of which occurred after she worked for the Brainerd family.
I heard a voice of joy. Mary’s beloved younger sister Kate Leonard—my great grandmother—married Michael Sullivan in May 1891 at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (aka St. Mary’s) in Burlington, Vermont. Many generations of my extended Irish family were baptized, married, and sent off to burial at St. Mary’s church. Mary Leonard was her sister Kate’s bridesmaid. A newspaper article described it as an “enjoyable affair.” I can hear Mary’s laughing and singing during the festivities.
Her smiles and songs turned into tears and anguished wails just over a year later when, in November 1892, young Kate Leonard died right after giving birth to her first and only child, my grandmother Catherine Sullivan (later Gleason). Mary Leonard again mourned the death of another young mother when Catherine also died at age 46 in 1939. My own mother Kathleen—like her mother Catherine—grew up motherless.
As she did for her sister Kate’s daughter, however, Mary often stepped into a role of maternal support for my mother and her sisters (named Mary and Rita). Mom recalls visiting Mary Leonard and her brother Thomas often. All these young women heard the steady soothing voice of Mary Leonard the caregiver. They were not the only ones.
Along with her friend and employer Dr. Ezra Brainerd, Mary Leonard encouraged her brother Thomas to get a full formal education. He did, and in December 1902 was ordained a Catholic priest. He preached his first sermon on Christmas at the family Cathedral in Burlington. From the St. Mary’s pulpit, Thomas publicly acknowledged the help Dr. Ezra Brainerd gave him.
Mary Leonard was an integral part of Thomas Leonard’s work after that first sermon. Thus, Mary—who never married—also spoke in the voice of a single career woman, if not quite in the way we understand that phrase today. In 1904, Mary started her long vocation of caring for her brother (my mother called him “Uncle Father Leonard”) as he went about his priestly ministry.
For the next four decades, Mary Leonard had her own living quarters in each of Uncle Thomas Leonard’s rectories. She cooked, cleaned, and cared for him and his fellow priests. In a sort of a homecoming that started in 1913 and ended when she and Thomas retired in November 1949, Mary lived and worked at the rectory of the Catholic Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (ironically, also called St. Mary’s) in Middlebury.
Such assignments facilitated Mary Leonard’s voice of friendship. Back home in Middlebury, Mary often saw and spoke with her old mentor Dr. Ezra Brainerd, up until his death in 1924. After these encounters, the old scholar would tell family members—with unconcealed delight—how he “ran into Mary Leonard today!”
Mary also accompanied her younger brother Thomas on many of his various ecclesiastic and social calls around the state of Vermont. As a result, she probably knew—quite well I would guess—most, if not all, of the Catholic priests of the Diocese of Burlington. Mary and Thomas even traveled home to Ireland together in April 1928, Mary’s first time back to the auld sod in almost 50 years.
Mary also spoke the language of family. After traveling to America alone in 1882, and then working so hard to bring the rest of the Leonards across the Atlantic in the late 1880s, Mary tended diligently to them all once they were here. Several Vermont newspapers reported her frequent visits back to Burlington to visit her parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, and friends, as well as return visits by many of them to Middlebury and anywhere else where Mary and Thomas worked.
Despite the loss of her beloved sister Kate in 1892, Mary did serve again as a maid of honor, when her brother David married a woman (also named Mary) in 1896. Mary Leonard buried her parents in 1902 and 1921. She grieved the loss of her brothers James (a lifelong epileptic), Patrick, and David in 1933, 1940, and 1945. In 1928, she and her brother James transferred to my grandparents—for their growing Leonard, Sullivan, and Gleason family—the house where my mother grew up.
Although Irish to her core, Mary discovered her American voice too. For years, census reports noted she was an alien. She finally found the time in 1940 to apply for and obtain her naturalized American citizenship, more than a half century after she arrived here.
Like so many of us, Mary’s life also gave voice to personal sacrifice and suffering. In November 1949, Thomas and Mary—both now in or near their 80s—retired from their Middlebury Catholic Church ministry and moved in with their last surviving brother John in Burlington. These were hard years and Mary’s retirement was not a long one. She endured senility and heart disease, and finally passed away 70 years ago, on February 19, 1951, at age 85. As proof of their enduring bond, her younger brother Thomas the priest died just seven months later. He could not live without his rock, his sister Mary Leonard.
All her life, it seems, Mary did difficult work, taken for granted perhaps, but certainly behind the scenes. Yet, people did notice, and they “heard” her voice too.
The major Vermont newspapers in Middlebury, Burlington, and Rutland all ran articles reporting the sad news of Mary Leonard’s passing. Burlington’s mayor and its postmaster both served as her pallbearers. The local Catholic bishop presided over her funeral Mass. Some 20 other priests and numerous prominent members of the community attended too. All in all, it was a fine send off, one rivalling that given her brother Thomas a few months later.
Remarkably, seven decades after Mary Leonard’s death, descendants of the Brainerd family contacted me. They are Dr. Ezra Brainerd’s great grandchildren, Edie Geraci and John Haltigan. Alice Beaumelle “Babbie” Brainerd Nelson, the author of Four Ducks on a Pond, was their great aunt. Edie and John attended the Middlebury school Father Thomas Leonard started. Edie told me about her aunt’s wonderful book, and reported how both Mary Leonard and Thomas Leonard are remembered fondly in the Brainerd family lore.
With our recent communications, I hope that an historic friendship between our two families—the Brainerds and the Leonards—has been renewed. How does such a wonderful thing happen after so many years and to people who have never even met?
Just as Father Thomas Leonard did after his 1902 ordination, I must credit the kind and generous spirit of Dr. Ezra Brainerd. Who knows what would have become of my family had he not helped bring the Leonards here from Ireland.
For me, however, the heart and soul of the story, is a fine and selfless daughter of both Ireland and Vermont, a woman named Mary Leonard. Her voice echoes on even today.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah—and about his family’s roots in Burlington, Vermont—was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
