Sous-série 37 - Drawings relating to Fr. Jerome Hawes and Mount Alvernia Hermitage, Cat Island, The Bahamas

9 items; ink drawings on paper; photographic print

The subseries comprises a collection of original ink drawings relating to the life of Father Jerome Hawes (1876-1956), an English Catholic priest who led an unorthodox life as a Franciscan hermit on an island in the Bahamas in the mid-twentieth century. The drawings are most likely the work of Peter Frederick Anson (1889-1975), the English spiritual writer and artist. The original drawings were probably sent by Anson to Fr. Senan Moynihan OFM Cap.

Born in 1876, John Cyril Hawes trained as an architect before being ordained as a Church of England (Anglican) priest in 1903. His first mission was in the Bahamas where he was sent to repair churches destroyed by a hurricane in 1908. He later led a nomadic existence in the United States where he converted to Catholicism. He was ordained a Catholic priest in Rome in February 1915 and was subsequently sent to Western Australia where he built several churches. In 1939 he returned to the Bahamas and settled on Cat Island. Increasingly attracted to the solitary and hermetical aspect of Franciscan spirituality, he built by hand a small stone monastery he called Mount Alvernia Hermitage on Como Hill, the highest point in the Bahamas. He resided there in effective isolation as a hermit for the remaining sixteen years of his life. He died on 26 June 1956. At his own request, Hawes was buried in a cave located beneath the Hermitage he constructed on Cat Island.

For biographical information on Father Jerome Hawes (1876-1956) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hawes

The remains of the Franciscan Hermitage built by Father Jerome Hawes on Cat Island in the Bahamas are still in existence and are now a well-known local landmark and tourist attraction. See https://www.makelikeanapeman.com/2013/04/09/father-jerome-2/

The correspondence of Fr. Senan Moynihan OFM Cap. has several letters written by Father Jerome Hawes.