IFTTT Autopost 
Almeide Maxis Duchemin was born on April 8, 1810 in Baltimore, Maryland. Because of her mixed-race background – her mother was from Haiti – she was considered Black. A family named Duchemin adopted her and provided her with an excellent education that included French language and culture.
When she was 19, she became an original member of a new religious community of Black Sisters founded by Mother Mary Lange and Sulpician Father James Hector Joubert. The new order was known as the Oblate Sisters of Providence. In this community, Almeide took the name Theresa and served in leadership roles, including superior general.
While serving the Oblates, met a Redemptorist priest, Fr. Louis Florent Gillet, who wanted to establish a religious congregation in Monroe, Michigan. Specifically, he wanted a group of Sisters to teach French immigrants, especially French Catholic girls who had immigrated to the United States from Canada. So, in 1845, Mother Theresa left the Oblates and went with Fr. Louis to Monroe. Together, they founded a new religious order called the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. There, they had the support of Redemptorist priests who also worked in Monroe.
In 1855, however, the Redemptorists left Monroe before the new Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters had their congregation’s Rule fully formed.
Three years later, Mother Theresa went to Pennsylvania to see if there were opportunities to grow her community in the Diocese of Philadelphia. From that time on, Mother Theresa encountered one problem after another, being rejected by bishops and other sisters alike. In fact, one bishop divided her Immaculate Heart of Mary in Pennsylvania in half, and she was considered an outsider. Though she tried to find a reconciliation of the two groups of Sisters, she found this was not possible. Therefore, thinking maybe she was the cause of their problems, she left the United States in January of 1867 and went to live with the Grey Nuns of Canada.
Despite the continual problems Mother Theresa encountered in the religious life, she was amazingly focused on serving those in need and building her Immaculate Heart of Mary community. Fortunately, she was an incredibly tough person who never let the multiple rejections keep her down. In fact, despite all the opposition she experienced, she was able to found many schools and orphanages in the States of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Mother Theresa was able to return to the motherhouse of her order in 1885 and live the last seven years of her life in peace. Mother Theresa died on January 4, 1892 in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Despite being the co-founder of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters, that order basically hid her existence for 160 years, for the members thought that if white women knew that this order had been co-founded by a Black woman, they would not want to join.
Today, the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters once again honor her memory, and she has been inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.
