On January 23, Franciscans honor the memory of St. Marianne Cope, the first American Franciscan woman to be canonized.
Emigrating from Germany to America
Barbara Cope was born in 1838 to Peter and Barbara Koob of Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany. Two years later the family emigrated to the United States and settled in Utica, New York, where the name was eventually Anglicized to Cope.
Joining Sisters of the Third Order of Saint Francis
When her father became an invalid, Barbara, 14, as the eldest child at home, went to work in a textile factory to support her family. Upon her father’s death in 1862 and the younger children now being old enough to work themselves, Barbara joined the Sisters of the Third Order of Saint Francis in Syracuse, New York, with the name Marianne.
Some of the exhibits at Saint Marianne Cope Shrine and Museum in Syracuse, NY