Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
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Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (May 20, 1851–July 9, 1926) was an American Roman Catholic religious sister and social worker. Born in Lenox, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia, she was educated in London, Paris, Rome and Florence. She married author George Parsons Lathrop in 1883; the two of them converted to Roman Catholicism in 1891. The couple had a son, Francis, who died at the age of 5.
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was well known for her service near and within New York City, caring for impoverished cancer patients by founding St. Rose's Free Home for Incurable Cancer in the Lower East Side. After the death of her husband (from whom she had separated before moving to New York City) in 1898, she became a sister, and as Mother Mary Alphonsa, she founded a community of Dominican religious, now known as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne.
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was awarded an honorary A.M. from Bowdoin College in 1925. She died on July 9, 1926. In 2003, the Cardinal Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York approved the movement for Lathrop's canonization.
