The Life of Mary G. Shaw – Psychic from Birth
W.W. Donham
copyright 2012 W.W. Donham
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CHAPTER 1.
Born in the third generation of a distinct line of ancestry whose genealogical tree numbered among its sons and daughters, a large plurality of bishops, priests, monks and nuns, did the subject of the book first enter upon her earthly travels.
In the old crescent city of New Orleans, as she has been justly called, there was born during the last days of August, near, or about the twenty-fifth, A.D. 1848, a brown eyed baby girl, at the home of Patrick and Catherine Dullihante. Down at the Slave market, the cry of the auctioneer’s voice could be heard calling out the sale of human beings. Simultaneously there could be heard ringing out on the morning air, the first cry of the newly born babe in the home of the young Irish immigrants. No wizard’s voice spoke to tell of the future which lay before the tiny infant in the low, wooden cradle, and no one on the foreign shores where it had found birth, knew aught of the portentous parental influence coming from the blood of ancestors, whose abiding place had been for a hundred years and more, among the rugged mountains and beautiful green valleys of Ireland. From monastic cells and cloistered walls, the new born babe had received a heritage of love for the good, upright, beautiful and true, which were to be such strong factors in the molding of her eventful life’s work.
As time faded, and the brown-eyed girl baby grew away from her infantile days, there came another little stranger into the household, the second daughter of the Dullihantes; Mary and Kate, they were christened.
A change of employment, which called for a change of home, was the cause of Patrick Dullihante, moving with his wife and children the following year, to Cincinnati, Ohio.
It was here that the young parents made for themselves a permanent home. Steady employment as first mate on the steamboat, “John Hancock”, making time between Cincinnati and New Orleans, was secured by the youthful father, and soon all was going well with the inmates of the little cottage standing far out on George street.
It was a plain, unpretentious home, its greatest charm and attraction rested in the purity of the pious life lived by those beneath its roof. This charm of peace and contentment emanating from the hearts of the members of the household, could be felt by any stranger who chanced to pass their way, and friends crossing their threshold, went their way feeling light of heart and bettered from having been within its portals.
Mrs. Dullihante, was studiously careful as to the religious and moral training of her little brood, and it was this sentiment beating so strong in her breast that prompted her in her labor of love. The house was old-fashioned, with large, airy rooms and an old fashioned garden in the rear, where hollyhocks and cabbage vied with each other for supremacy. The Crucifix adorned the little niches in the walls, and sacred pictures portraying the sufferings of the sorrowful Nazarene, hung before the eyes of the children growing into maturity, for their daily observance and meditation. Doubly dear to her mother’s heart had Mary become now, as tribulation at last smote her heart in the loss of her babies, Simon and Thomas, twin brothers.
Comforting the bereaved hearts of the children and nestling close to her mother’s side with words of consolation, Mary moved to and fro, the star of the home circle now shadowed by death.
Much concern did Mrs. Dullihante suffer at times, over the changeful moods of her eldest daughter Mary, whose brown eyes oft-times showed lights and shadows of a peculiar intensity. The girl would lose herself to her surroundings, and look beyond the narrow confines encircling herself and her playmates, as though gazing upon some other world whose reflection cast itself upon her; perhaps in some cell, or cloistered wall, these heartbeats had been felt by her illustrious ancestors. She was yet but a young girl when the whole parish was startled by the “peculiar” things revealed by this still more peculiar child. Rumors went around the parish that Mary could “see things”, and Mary got to hear of the rumor, and forthwith she shut herself up tight like a hermit clam, and what she saw thereafter, for many a day, was not given to the good Catholics of the parish to condemn.
It was her nature to be thorough in her work of whatever it might partake, and most earnestly had she followed the study of her religious teachings given her at the convent of Notre Dame. At St. Peter’s cathedral, she received her first communion from Father Coppinger, at a remarkable early age, and was confirmed a Catholic by Bishop Spaulding of Louisville, Kentucky.
Time passed on, and Mary had grown into a striking looking lass of some thirteen years or more, with a peculiarly sensitive nature, a fact which had become fixed in the minds of her young associates, and tended to make her all the more dear to them. She was called “peculiar” and “odd”. That was all, but loved for her good and generous nature.
One day, soon after confirmation, she broke the long silence she had so rigorously keeping in regard to the supernatural sight she possessed, but this time she would be sure what she had to say would not become known to anyone save the Bishop of the diocese. And that was to make known to him a diabolical plan looming up in the near future for the moral destruction of a young priest of the diocese.
Suddenly appearing before the Bishop one morning, as he sat busily engaged at his desk in the library of the rectory, she briefly told him her errand – that was to send Father Coppinger away at once, without delay, for a beautiful devil, in the garb of a handsome young woman, was seeking his ruin.
“Father Coppinger will fall, if you do not send him away Bishop!”
The young priest was called into the audience with the strange freakish lass, and at the close of her speech, which she had again repeated, the young religious bowed his head, saying sorrowfully, the he “knew danger was dogging his footsteps.” He thanked the young girl for having opened a subject that he himself, had for sometime been seeking a favorable opportunity to explain to his Bishop.
“It is the work of the devil!” declared the irate Bishop, “taker her away, I’ll have none of this foolishness in my parish!” In defiance of her bishop’s authority, the Irish lass walked past Father Coppinger with the parting words of admonition. “Beware of that beautiful woman, Father, she will drag you down to eternal ruin!” her face was white like death, and her eyes shone with a supernatural light. The young priest turned away silently, a shadow clouding his handsome young face. Mary went home, filled with an inward hatred of her own self, the she must be separate, and different to other people.
“Am I of the devil’s brood?” She asked herself, as she stood at the narrow window of her cotage home, looking with a gloom clouded face, through the window into space beyond. She recalled the words of the enraged bishop.
“He said it was the devil’s work, and that was what I tried to tell him about – about that beautiful devil, with her arms always reaching out through that black cloud of smoke that is gathering around that young priest, and tells them to take me away. But I’ll not hush, I’ll tell Father Coppinger as long as I have breath to talk, of those horrible, leering faces that gather around him when he is near that woman. I see the same sight – why I saw plainly yesterday when Father and she passed we children when we were playing out there on the green. What do I care if she is one of the fine ladies of Cincinnati, she carries those devils faces with her wherever she goes. I can see them and I know they are there – maybe the Bishop is right – I am of the devil’s brood, or I couldn’t see such things!” Mary’s inward storm quieted by her mother’s voice calling to her, to “get about doing something, and not stand a dreamin’ all the day long.” Hastily bending her knee before a wooden crucifix which hung upon the wall, she uttered a hurried prayer to St. Michael to not “let the devil get hold of her,” and a rapid “Hail Mary” for double protection these “doings in her life which made her – not like unto other folks.” Then she hurried away to lend a helping hand in the daily work of the household.
Voluptuous beauty, with scarlet lips and mobile brow, had looked with covetous eyes upon the talented young priest, who met his parishioners, one and alike, with a kind and benevolent smile. It had remained for the queer, freakish Irish Lass of thirteen to analyze the true feelings of the gay, society belle, who let no opportunity escape her, to throw herself in the pathway of the young priest. The bishop gave no credence to Mary’s outburst, nevertheless, he found himself at times watching his young prelate from out of the corner of his eyes. After days of this careful watchfulness, he became convinced that Father Coppinger was laboring under some great mental depression, it was then that he spoke to the young priest of the wild charge of the Irish lass, thinking to thus open the way for a clear confession. Nor was he mistaken in his overture. After a long talk of more than an hour, the young priest went to his room and gathered together his few personal belongings, his handsome face shining with the holy light of a high and noble resolve. He was missed for many long months in the parish, it was said by some who claimed to know all about the change, the he had been sent to another diocese, but the truth none of them ever guessed. Self-banishment and a secluded life in a far remote monastery, was the strict regimen the young religious had imposed upon himself, as due punishment for allowing the sensual fumes of a pleasure-loving world to touch and tarnish his vestments.
A life of gay reverly, for she who would have enthralled him, brought to her fireside an early old age, and a withered heart, who can, which was the wisest? Judge ye your own heart-thoughts, as herein you answer this question.
Among her classmates at the convent of Notre Dame, Mary was given precedence in all matters of any moment, and by all, she tacitly acknowledged their sovereign. By nature, she seemed born to lead and rule.
The austere air of authority marked her personality, like the fall of a well fitting mantle. Coupled with this trait of character, blending the whole into a strong, fine nature, was a heart full of sympathy for suffering humanity, and a deep, abiding love for friends.
Passing from the event in the Bishop’s private sanctum, the days glided by without any marked occurrence, save the usual routine of home, and school life, each day bringing Mary nearer the threshold of woman–hood, when her life work was to begin.
At the home of the Dullihantes there was genial hospitality, and Mrs. Dullihante was a special favorite with her friends. She was loved and reverenced by all who knew her, for her many good qualities of character. She was ever ready with a kind and generous hand, and a gentle word of encouragement to all who chanced to pass her way, who were in need of sympathy.
This perhaps was the happiest period of her life, with her family around her and her life filled with busy cares for her household. But life is full of changes and nothing remains the same for all time. As the days passed on, shadows flitted across the threshold of this home of the happy Irish Immigrant. Death, man’s common and relentless foe, claimed the father and husband, Patrick Dullihante, who lost his life in the destruction of the boat of which he had been first mate for so many years. This last bereavement hushed the joyous song in the heart of the happy wife and mother. She went quietly about her home duties, while care and sorrow were beginning to impress their first lines and shape furrows upon her brow. Time gives no heed to the heartaches of the human family, he throws a soft mantle over all alike, which smoothens over their grief, as he passes ever onward with his swiftly flying feet.
Mary Dullihante did not feel the loneliness of death, which her mother’s cried so poignant. To her, the baby brother and her father were as real as ever, and she could see their forms pass in and out of the old house, just the same as when they were in life.
A fact which she cherished strictly to herself, as she did not wish to add to her mother’s trouble by mentioning to her a subject which had already given her great uneasiness of mind.
However, there was one to whom Mary would talk, and one who always encouraged her to tell him these things, which the priests said was the work of the devil, and through which she was known by her young friends as being “queer.”
It was the young son of a tobacco merchant who possessed Mary’s confidence. He was much older than she, and of an entirely different type of nature. He had heard of the young Irish lass, with her queer, odd ways, for thus was she spoken of by those who could not understand her but to the young son of the tobacco merchant she was no enigma, otherwise, she was a deep and interesting study. Being quite a student of the occult science of dead ages, he realized that the young girl was a Mystic, who possessed a finely organized, and extremely sensitive nature. To him, she was beautiful as some rare and newly discovered flower, and he sought every opportunity to be in her presence.
Alonzo Churchill Garrett was a scion of a sturdy Scotch family of fine extraction, and from his ancestors he had inherited that which goes so far toward making man, or woman the perfect being God intended as they should be – a noble character, a fine mentality and a pleasing personality.
From his first meeting with Mary, his admiration was awakened, and as time passed on and he grew to know her real nature, with the mystical, heaven-born gift, so little understood by those about her, his admiration deepened into a sincere abiding love which soon culminated in a happy marriage. When he led his bride-to-be, to the old priest’s rectory, and by a dispensation from the Catholic church, made her his bride, there was a smothered sigh of relief from the worthy prelate’s heart, for now that love had come into the life of this remarkable child of the Holy Mother Church, he hoped as a wife and mother, she would be free from the machinations of the devil, and there would be no more of those uncanny revelations visiting her young, fertile brain.
The young couple was soon located in their new home, and as the months rolled by, each successive one but deepened and sanctified their love for each other, making their lives peaceful, harmonious and tranquil. From their first meeting, followed by love and marriage, the lives of Alonzo Churchill Garrett and his young wife, Mary Dullihante, was one of love and perfect harmony. Following her marriage came several years of Mrs. Garrett’s life that was filled with complete happiness, her energies wholly devoted to her husband, her family and her church in which she enjoyed a large social circle. For twelve years she was the Prefect of the married ladies’ Sodality, and throughout the society she was highly esteemed and deeply respected for her high standard of true womanhood, and moral rectitude.
“It was too perfect to last!” she said to a questioner who was once talking to her about that period of her life. The remark was occasioned by the death of her twin sons,
Alonzo and Edward, who only lived to be baptized and then passed out – gathered into the Great Heart of the Most High, while yet in the purity and innocence of their infancy.
The mother love once awakened, hungered for its own, and in other days that had come and gone, the shadowed home was blessed by the birth of a girl baby – fair-haired – blue eyed winsome little Dollie. Flitting about the home like a saint in the hearts of all her kindred. Knowing as I do, so much of Mrs. Garrett’s good works throughout the parish at the period of her life, I do not hesitate to pause in this thread of her life’s story, to speak of the many noble deeds coming from her hands during these days. Her efforts were ever directed to the strengthening of weak and faltering hands, and the steadying of tired and wandering feet.
Though a non-Catholic, her husband was always an earnest supporter, and kind assistant in her good works among the needy. It was during these visits of hers down among the poor districts of her own home city, that Mrs. Garrett learned much of the great lesson of life and its attendant misery and destitution, which finally led her out into the fullness of her life’s work.
Nor was the happiness of her own home to remain unbroken; after the storm bursts upon our heads then can we look through the rifts in the storm cloud and see, by vivid contrast, the beauty of the clear sky, and so it was in the life of Mary Garrett, when on a fatal day her little golden haired girl, but six years of age was taken from her home, and transplanted in heaven, leaving her home bereft of so much of its brightness. Blooming for a day, like a beautiful Ardath flower, she had flown like some rare bird from her parental earthly home, back to her Creator, the giver of life.