Venerable Cornelia Connelly

Cornelia Connelly, SHCJ (née Cornelia Peacock; January 15, 1809 – April 18, 1879) was an American-born educator who was the foundress of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, a religious congregation in the Roman Catholic Church. In 1846, she founded the first of many Holy Child schools in England. A beatification process for Connelly has been opened. In 1992, she was proclaimed as venerable by Pope John Paul II. Cornelia Peacock was born in Philadelphia and raised a Presbyterian by her father, Ralph William Peacock Sr. and mother, Mary Swope. Before marrying Cornelia's father, Cornelia's mother married John Bowen Sr., a Jamaican plantation owner. Together they had four children. However, only two, a daughter named Isabella and a son named John Jr., made it to adulthood. When John Sr. died in 1794, the children assumed control of the plantation, and Swope received an annual annuity of $1,655 (~$35,077 in 2024). With her father dying in 1818 and her mother dying in 1823, Peacock was left orphaned at the age of 14. She went to live with her half-sister Isabella and her husband, Austin Montgomery. In 1831 she was baptized into the Protestant Episcopal Church and, despite her family's protests, married the Reverend Pierce Connelly, an Episcopal priest. Cornelia had been well educated by tutors at home. Pierce was five years her senior, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. The two moved to Natchez, Mississippi, where Pierce had accepted the Holy Trinity Episcopal church's rectorship. By all accounts, they were an immensely happy couple and welcomed by their parishioners. Pierce profited from land investments, and in 1835 was appointed chairman of the Episcopal Convention of the Southwest, which augured well for a future bishopric. Later research has also revealed that the Connellys owned and sold slaves, the first having been gifted to them by a friend after the birth of their first child. The couple had two children during this period, Mercer (b.