The Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity is a religious order of the Episcopal Church founded in Boston in 1882 by Mother Ruth Margaret, formerly of the Society of St. Margaret, and Charles Chapman Grafton, then rector of the Church of the Advent, Boston, and later bishop of the Diocese of Fond du Lac. The sisterhood moved to establish a new motherhouse in Providence in 1888 and later moved to Fond du Lac in 1905. Eventually, the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity worked out a network of branch houses nationwide, including New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Portland (Maine and Oregon), Newport, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Indigenous reservations in Wisconsin and Nevada. The Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity also founded two retreat centers, one on Long Island and another in Santa Barbara. The spiritual center of the convent, branch houses, and retreat centers were the chapel and their spiritual life as a community. 

Of the sisterhoods founded during the Oxford Movement in the Episcopal Church, the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity considered its mission unique, focusing on serving parishes rather than building institutions like schools, hospitals, and orphanages. This parish work included Christian education for all ages, including the lapsed, preparation for the sacraments, spiritual counsel and prayer, altar guild instruction, design and repair of vestments, altar coverings and linens, and baking Eucharistic wafers. 

In addition to founding the first Anglican religious orders since the Reformation, one of the legacies of the Oxford Movement to the Episcopal Church was the rich liturgical heritage, including frequent Eucharist, ornate processions, and more frequent feast days. The vibrant liturgical life of the Oxford Movement contributed to the building of ornately decorated churches and the renewal of ecclesiastical arts. 

This catholic revival was also connected to doctrine; vestments, altar linens, and other church appointments stood for continuity and universality, as well as the centrality of the Eucharist. The earliest Anglican sisterhoods, like the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity actively pursued the ecclesiastical arts to support mission work. To prepare liturgical spaces for these liturgies, the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity and women of Anglo-Catholic parishes created altar guilds to teach how to prepare the altar, embroider, and repair the linens and vestments. Some parishes included junior altar guilds where older girls learned similar skills. The vision of the sisters in teaching altar guild was to equip local people with the skills in altar guild and liturgical arts to ensure that beautiful worship was accessible to all parishes who wanted it, regardless of income. To support this vision, the sisters not only conducted ongoing altar guild training in the parishes they served, but they offered diocesan altar guild training and through their “missionary enterprises” created and donated vestments, frontals, linens, and wafters to parishes in need, military chaplaincies, and Anglo-Catholic parishes in other parts of the world. 

The Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity produced vestments, altar frontals and hangings, and altar linens for almost one hundred years, starting in Boston in 1890 and ultimately from the Convent of the Holy Nativity in Fond du Lac until 1988. The workrooms were organized according to levels of technical skill, from those sisters equipped to design and execute the most elaborate embroideries and teach others to those who did more straightforward sewing and finishing. Artistic skills in drawing and composition were needed as many of the finest designs were original. Laywomen Associates skilled in needlework were included in production.

The scope of vestments and altar linens created by the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity is staggering. For example, in 1915, the sisters created eight altar cloths, seven antependia, thirty chasubles, twenty-four stoles and maniples, thirty-six eucharistic veils and burses, thirty-five office stoles, fifteen bookmarks, a dalmatic, one cincture, seventeen albs, twenty-three amices, thirteen girdles, ten surplices, nine fair linens, five credence table covers, nine corporals, five palls, ten lawn veils, seventy-six purificators, thirty lavabos, four stoles’ collars, and two linen covers.¹ Although the number of articles produced declined as churches became fully stocked, the sisterhood continued to create many more ornate articles with delicate embroidery. In 1928, the sisters made twelve chasubles, thirty-six stoles, and copes and miters. The sisters also repaired existing garments.² As liturgical life adapted, so did the work of the sisters. The embroidery department diversified to produce altar pillows and large dossals.³ In addition to artistry, the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity’s missionary enterprises required business acumen. The sister-in-charge of each department tracked and reported orders by income, expenses, and the type of goods sold or donated. Completing and shipping orders and corresponding with customers was included as part of the business and furthered the relationships between the sisterhood and local parishes and dioceses worldwide. 

The Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity most extensive missionary enterprise involved the production of altar bread. An extension of Anglo-Catholic Eucharistic theology, altar bread was an income stream for the sisterhood and an ecclesiastical art. They started baking altar bread in 1886, including the large priest’s hosts and the smaller wafers for the people. Altar bread was in high demand, as daily Mass, to the extent that a priest was available, was integral to the sisterhood and increasingly the practice in Anglo-Catholic parishes. Eventually, an ecumenical clientele purchased altar bread: Episcopalians, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and Methodists from almost every state in the United States, Korea, Japan, Pakistan, the Bahamas, and other countries. The critical mass of the orders came from churches in Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan.⁴ 

The missionary enterprise of altar bread production expanded rapidly, and at its height, the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity sent out over one million communion wafers annually. By 1894, the sisters baked over 4400 priest’s hosts and over 47,700 communion wafers for their use, as well as St. Stephen’s, Providence, and Church of the Advent, Boston. The total cost of production was $24.40.⁵ The Eucharistic network, connected through altar bread, expanded throughout the early twentieth century. During World War II, the sisters sent altar bread to over twenty separate Army and Navy bases in the United States and abroad.⁶ By 1971, the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity and a staff of three women Associates from Fond du Lac produced 1.8 million individual wafers and over 78,000 priest’s hosts.⁷

Because the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity considered altar bread production an extension of the altar, it resisted efforts to commercialize the operation. The wafers were baked, cut, stamped, and packed into rolls by hand for distribution. The wafers were embossed with Eucharistic symbols like the Lamb of God. Rejected wafers were recycled as fish food. The baking was tricky as the wafers easily scorched. Standing over hot brick ovens while wearing wool serge habits took considerable spiritual discipline. The work typically required one sister full-time, assisted by several novices. Trusted Associates also worked in altar bread production.

From its inception, the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity was focused on teaching, retreats, and a rich heritage in altar guild training and the ecclesiastical arts. Assisted by Associates of the sisterhood, the sisters were spiritually nourished by their deep commitment to caring for the altar and the sacraments. The spiritual charism of the sisterhood, along with their missionary enterprises, deepened relationships across parishes and dioceses to advance the catholic faith throughout the Episcopal Church. 

Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook is a priest of the Diocese of Los Angeles, the Historiographer of the Episcopal Church, and the editor of the journal Anglican & Episcopal History. She is the author of the recent book, A History of the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity: Advancing the Anglo-Catholic Movement in the Episcopal Church (Wipf & Stock, 2024).

1. Yearbook 1915-1918, 1919-1920, SHNC, 16; 88, 169, SHNC
2. Yearbook 1920-1931, SHNC, 200. 232, SHNC.
3. Annual Report of Convent and Mission Houses, 1940-1943, 60, SHNC.
4. Karst, “Traditional Religious in a Secular World,” 14. 
5. Yearbook 1894, “Report of Altar-Breads,” SHNC, n.p.
6. Annual Report of Convent and Mission Houses, 1940-1943, SHNC, for an example of the trend, see 58.
7. Karst, “Traditional Religious in a Secular World,” 14.

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