The Chronicle of Higher Education

which the bishop went on to found in 1843. The portrait of the Mother
Superior, who herself mysteriously vanished in Québec in May 1836,
remains lost.
While the archives of the Trois-Rivières Ursulines did not bring
the painting to light, a serendipitous find led to my next book project
by introducing me to an attempt at a miraculous cure that took place
in the Charlestown convent. In a nearly two-century-old letter about
the illness and subsequent death of the convent’s Mother Assistant,
dated September 1827, its author, Sister Marie-Jean, wrote: “We have
made two novenas, together with the Prince Hohenlohe, but our
prayers were not altogether favorably heard. … ” As I read on, my in-
terest grew. The following month, the sisters continued to follow the
prince’s directions for a cure, but again, they were disappointed. “The
hoped for miracle not having taken place, there was nothing to do but
submit to the holy will of God.”
This story was only a sidebar to the topics I was researching, but I
was intrigued by the account of a failed miracle. Certainly this Prince
Hohenlohe, whoever he was, must have some miracles to his credit if
the Ursuline community was attempting to tap his abilities in a crisis.
I came to believe that these serendipitous discoveries were them-
selves small miracles. I began to research the prince and found that
he had been best known in the United States for a dramatic cure at-
tributed to him three years before the letter I found in Trois-Rivières
had been written. In the spring of 1824, in the young capital city of
Washington, D.C., Ann Carbery Mattingly, the widowed sister of the
city’s Roman Catholic mayor, was miraculously cured of late-stage
breast cancer. Just hours before her anticipated death, she arose from
her sickbed free of agonizing pain and able to enjoy an additional 31
years of life. That miracle was attributed to the charismatic German
priest Prince Alexander of Hohenlohe, who was purported to have
cured hundreds of people throughout Europe and Great Britain.
Following the prince’s instructions, sent in a letter carried across
the Atlantic by ship, Mrs. Mattingly’s priests scheduled nine days
of prayer, followed by a Mass on March 10, 1824, timed to coincide
with the prince’s morning service in Europe. Unlike the unanswered
petition of 1827, the 1824 cure was a dramatic event that riveted the
nation’s capital. I found that debates over the miracle’s validity and
meaning helped illuminate larger questions about race, gender, and
class in the early American republic.
After some preliminary research, I published a few essays on the
Mattingly miracle. Mrs. Mattingly’s great-great-great-granddaughter,
who was working on her family history, saw the articles and contacted
me. She had made good progress on the family tree, but had been
stymied by a lack of information about the widow’s husband and son,
both named John. Mrs. Mattingly’s son predeceased his mother by
more than 15 years. I was able to build on some of this descendant’s
findings and collaborate with her to solve a longstanding family
mystery: Why had Mrs. Mattingly, who experienced two miraculous
cures, one from cancer in 1824 and the other from a dangerous infec-
tion in her foot in 1831, disinherited her own grandchildren? Why
did her wealthy brother, the former mayor Thomas Carbery, also
leave them out of his substantial estate? While other nieces and neph-
ews were named in his will, Carbery left the bulk of his estate, which
would have been worth about $4 million today, to the St. Vincent’s
Orphan Asylum. Mrs. Mattingly’s grandchildren, themselves or-
phans, were not named as heirs.
Information about the family was enriched by a coincidence that
occurred at the Georgetown Visitation Monastery in Washington,
where Mrs. Mattingly had sought refuge after her dramatic cure
made her a public figure. The archivist and other religious women at
Visitation hosted me for four nights in the Hermitage, a little apart-
ment that had once been part of the school’s dormitory. There, I
studied letters, annals, and other convent records about miracles at
the monastery, and I conducted research at other archives in the city.
I was thrilled to be a guest where Mrs. Mattingly herself had found
some measure of peace.
A few months after my stay, the monastery archivist gave a presen-
tation to alumnae of the venerable Georgetown Visitation Prepara-
tory School, updating them on recent initiatives at the high school for
Catholic girls and on the planned renovations of the campus, includ-
ing the archives. The talk was part of a fund-raising effort for alums,
and the archivist happened to mention that a professor had been
doing research at Visitation for a book on the Mattingly miracle.
When the archivist finished her talk, a remarkable coincidence oc-
curred. Coincidences are not miracles, and generations of Carberys
and Mattinglys had continuing relationships with the Visitation
Monastery. But what happened next was revelatory, at least to me.
The archivist told me that an elderly woman approached her and
introduced herself as a direct Carbery descendant. The archivist
reported that the woman said that “something was troubling her,
that she had a box of letters and assorted papers, some of them Ann
Mattingly’s, and she wondered if I would want to see them. I said I
did, and asked permission to tell you about them also.”
Following this tip, I contacted the descendant, launching a friend-
ship with Ann Mattingly’s then-84-year-old great-great-great niece,
whose important collection of family materials was an invaluable
resource for my book. The descendant and I talked on the phone, and
she invited me not only to see her collection but also to stay with her.
So I went to Washington with my scanner and slept on couch cush-
ions on the floor of the apartment of a total stranger. We also collabo-
rated in unraveling the mysteries of the Mattingly family. Her collec-
tion includes letters, photos, scrapbooks, and crucial transcriptions
from a now-lost family Bible. This collaboration, among others, led to
solving one of the family’s deepest mysteries: the reason for the alien-
ation of Mrs. Mattingly’s son. ( You can read about it in my book.)

As Shakespeare in “Henry V, Act IV,” observed: “All things are
ready, if our minds be so.” Miracles are not the same as coincidences.
But who is to say that the encounters we pass off as happenstance are
not revelations of the interconnectedness that binds us all in the web
of history? Unexpected discoveries in the archives, fortuitous encoun-
ters, and willingness to pass through any door that opens can help
scholars untangle brain-teasing academic problems. Like our fore-
bears, the three princes of Serendip, modern-day scholar adventurers
continue their quests for new knowledge. In the archives, their hope
is for happy accidents and the sagacity to find serendipity.

Nancy Lusignan Schultz is chair and professor of English at Salem State
University. She is author, most recently, of Mrs. Mattingly’s Miracle: The
Prince, the Widow, and the Cure That Shocked Washington City
( Yale University Press, 2011).

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