1. Pierre Toussaint was declared Venerable by Pope John Paul II in 1996.
23 Facts About Pierre Toussaint
1. 2.
Pierre Toussaint helped finance the construction of St Patrick's Old Cathedral.
3.
Pierre Toussaint was the son of Ursule, the mistress's waiting maid.
4.
Pierre Toussaint's maternal great-grandmother, Tonette, had been born in Africa, where she was sold into slavery and brought to Saint-Domingue.
5.
Pierre Toussaint was educated as a child by the Berard family's tutors and was trained as a house slave.
6.
Pierre Toussaint earned a good living as a very popular hairdresser among New York society's upper echelon.
7.
Pierre Toussaint provided the fashionable with hairstyles from both sides of the Atlantic: the powdered and augmented coiffures of the French court, and the newly popular chignons and face-framing curls favored by Americans.
8.
Pierre Toussaint saved his money and paid for his sister Rosalie's freedom.
9.
Catherine Church Cruger, two years older than Pierre Toussaint, would become one of his key clients and friends.
10.
Pierre Toussaint was the daughter of John Barker Church and Angelica Schuyler, the muse and confidante of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.
11.
Pierre Toussaint began a correspondence with them that lasted for some decades, particularly with Aurora Berard, his godmother.
12.
Pierre Toussaint corresponded with friends in Haiti; his collected correspondence filled 15 bound volumes as part of the documentation submitted by the Archdiocese of New York to the Holy See to support canonization.
13.
Pierre Toussaint attended daily Mass for 66 years at St Peter's in New York.
14.
Pierre Toussaint owned a house on Franklin Street, where the Toussaints sheltered orphans and fostered numerous boys in succession.
15.
Pierre Toussaint supported them in getting an education and learning a trade; he sometimes helped them get their first jobs through his connections in the city.
16.
Pierre Toussaint raised funds for the first Catholic orphanage in New York, opened by the Sisters of Charity, in spite of the fact that it served only white children.
17.
Many Haitian refugees went to New York, and because Pierre Toussaint spoke French and English, he frequently helped the new immigrants.
18.
Pierre Toussaint often arranged sales of goods so they could raise money to live on.
19.
Pierre Toussaint crossed barricades to nurse quarantined yellow fever patients during an epidemic in New York.
20.
Pierre Toussaint helped raise money to build a new Catholic church in New York, which became Old St Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street.
21.
Pierre Toussaint was a benefactor of the first New York City Catholic school for Black children at St Vincent de Paul on Canal Street.
22.
Two years later, Pierre Toussaint died on June 30,1853, at the age of 87.
23.
Pierre Toussaint was buried alongside his wife and Euphemia in the cemetery of St Patrick's Old Cathedral on Mott Street.