Samuel Sutherland Cooper

American Catholic History

Noelle & Tom Crowe

History, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Education

5 • 724 Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2024

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Samuel Sutherland Cooper is perhaps the most important person in the early Church in America whom you’ve never heard of. He was a convert, born Anglican, and was a successful sea captain and merchant based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He traveled the world, tried many of the world’s delights, and became wealthy. But in in the early 1800s, illness and a strange voice from heaven compelled him to reconsider his vaguely Christian beliefs. He eventually became Catholic, and then entered seminary. His friends thought his conversion and decision to enter seminary were a reaction to a bad experience with a woman — or that he’d just lost his mind. But he persevered, was ordained, and became one of the most important priests in the early Catholic Church in America. The names of the Catholic figures with whom he was associated is a “who’s who” of the early Church in America: John Carroll, William DuBourg, Elizabeth Ann Seton, John Dubois, Gabriel Simon Brute, John England, the Hogan Schism, and John Cheverus. He likely also knew a young John Hughes, the future Archbishop of New York, while he was a professor at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He even reportedly experienced a eucharistic miracle, when the host turned to bleeding flesh in his hand during Mass, while he was stationed in Augusta, Georgia. He was a man of energy, resourcefulness, and a deep desire to save souls who worked tirelessly and zealously to that end. When illness sapped his energy he moved to Bordeaux, France, where his old friend, John — Jean — Cheverus had become the cardinal archbishop. Cardinal Cheverus died in his arms, and he died a few years later of pneumonia, being buried in the cathedral near the tomb of Cardinal Cheverus.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to American Catholic History brought to you by the support of listeners like you.
0:10.0	If you value this content, please become a supporter at Americancathichistory.org
0:15.1	slash support. I'm Newell Heister Crowe. And I'm Tom Crow. Once again, a word of thanks to our
0:20.5	supporters. Thank you, everyone word of thanks to our supporters.
0:21.3	Thank you, everyone who has supported our work.
0:24.0	Yes, thank you sincerely.
0:26.0	We're, you know, about 35% of the weight of the amount of support we need to really do everything we'd like to do with this content.
0:33.0	So if you've enjoyed the episodes, if you've learned something, if you've been inspired or edified,
0:42.7	please, please consider becoming a supporter. You can learn about our support tiers at American Catholic History.org slash support. The lowest is just $5 each month. But for more each month,
0:49.5	you'll get extra perks. Yes. Also, thank you for your very kind of views and your five-star
0:53.9	ratings. Yes, those help others find for your very kind of views and your five-star ratings.
0:54.6	Yes, those help others find us, and we really do appreciate hearing ways that our work has
0:59.4	helped you when you send us notes as well. Your kids, your students, your parish, however
1:05.8	you've been helped by our episodes. Thank you for your notes. Please keep them coming.
1:10.1	Yeah. So all that said,
1:11.5	on with the show. Today we're talking about Samuel Sutherland Cooper, one of the strangest figures
1:17.2	in early American Catholicism. Yeah, so this was actually a name I had never seen before,
1:22.8	and I only really stumbled upon it while I was working on the St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton episode. In the research
1:29.4	for that episode, I saw that the land from Mother Seedon's school in Emmetsburg, Maryland, was
1:35.1	given to her, purchased for her by somebody named Samuel Sutherland Cooper, and that he was a
1:41.5	seminarian at Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore at the time.
1:46.0	Now, I mean, that really struck me because what sort of seminarian was this?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Noelle & Tom Crowe, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Noelle & Tom Crowe and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.