Frances Margaret ("Fanny") Allen - WIH Mystery Cache
Hidden : 5/31/2019
Difficulty:
2 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:


This is one of the Women In History series, begun by MAMD in New Hampshire.  Do not go to the given coordinates; they are fake. To get the real coords read the profile of Fanny Allen here and answer the quiz. All answers can be found in or inferred from this reading.

 

This is a famous Vermonter, the daughter of an even more famous Vermonter.   Fanny Allen now is known as the name of a hospital, or more accurately, a campus of a hospital.  There is a lot more to the story. The Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph founded the Fanny Allen Hospital in 1894. They named their hospital after a remarkable young woman named Frances Margaret Allen, better known as Fanny Allen, who completed her education in Montreal where she converted to Catholicism.

 

Frances Margaret ("Fanny") Allen was the first New England woman to become a Catholic nun. The daughter of Revolutionary War General Ethan Allen, she converted to Catholicism and entered the convent of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph in Montreal in 1811.

 

Born on November 13, 1784, Frances Margaret Allen was the eldest child of the American patriot Ethan Allen and his second wife, Frances Montresor Brush Buchanan Allen. She was born in a house built by her father on the side of the Batten Kill in Sunderland, Vermont. Her family moved to various settlements in Vermont in her youth, and Frances, who was called Fanny, spent her childhood in Burlington, Westminster, and Swanton. She was four years old when her father died suddenly on February 12, 1789. After her father's death, the family moved to Westminster to live with their maternal grandmother.[3] It was in Westminster that Allen's mother married Dr. Jabez Penniman in 1793. Penniman cared for Fanny as if she were his own daughter, showing a great interest in her education.

 

In her youth, Allen reported having a mysterious experience that would later be a major factor in her decision to enter Catholic religious life. Allen was educated at Middlebury Seminary, and had an interest in science. She was not raised with a high regard for religion, and no consideration of religion was made in her education. Her father was a skeptic of organized religion in the same philosophical camp as Thomas Paine, and her step-father regarded the affectations of the religious people of his time and era as "pretentious".

 

In 1801, Penniman was appointed Collector of Customs for Vermont, at which time the family moved to Swanton. Four years later, when she was 21, Allen asked permission of her parents to go to Montreal. She stated that her intention was to continue her education by studying French, but her true motive was perhaps an intellectual curiosity about the beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church, even though she had never heard anything but disparaging vilifications of it. Her parents consented to sending her to Montreal, but first required her to be baptized by the Rev. Daniel Barber, an Anglican priest of Claremont, New Hampshire, and later to be a convert to Catholicism himself. Allen, who was strongly irreligious at the time, strongly objected, but consented in order to please her mother. However, she was scolded by Barber for laughing during the entire ceremony.

 

She became a pupil of the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame at Montreal in 1807. Allen would soon convert to Roman Catholicism, her conversion reportedly effected by a supernatural experience. Her conversion to Catholicism was regarded as remarkable in Vermont, an area in which the Catholic Church had scarcely any influence at that time in history. Her conversion was all the more remarkable for her decision to become a nun as well. In reaction, her parents promptly withdrew her from the convent and attempted to distract her from the idea of religious life with lavish parties and handsome suitors. They even enlisted the help of a "High Church" Episcopalian acquaintance to attempt to convince her that the Episcopalian church would be a better match for her.

 

All of these attempts at dissuading Allen had little effect, even prompting a friend of hers to remark, "It is astonishing how terribly in earnest Fanny is! She certainly believes in the Catholic religion with all her heart, though how a person with her extensive information and splendid talents can receive such absurdities is a puzzle to common sense!" Allen did, however, agree to her parents' request that she would wait a year before taking action, during which time she lived with them in Swanton. As soon as that year ended, she returned to Montreal, but had not determined what religious congregation she wanted to join. When she made her religious profession on May 18, 1811, the Catholic Encyclopedia reports that "the convent chapel was thronged, many American friends coming to witness the strange spectacle of Ethan Allen's daughter becoming a Catholic nun."

 

She spent the rest of her life as a nurse, working in the hospital's apothecary. She also served as an interpreter for English-speaking patients and cared for wounded combatants in the War of 1812. According to contemporary reports, Sister Allen was often called upon by Americans visiting Montreal, "begging to see the lovely young nun of the Hotel-Dieu, who was the first daughter New England had given to the sacred enclosure and whom they claimed as belonging especially to them through her connection with their favorite revolutionary hero." These interruptions were apparently so frequent that Sister Allen eventually requested the permission of her Mother Superior to decline all such calls, except those made by friends from her youth. She died of complications from a lung disease on September 10, 1819 at the Hôtel-Dieu, aged 35, and was buried under the chapel there. (From wikipedia)

 

SOLVE FOR N 44 AB.C W 073 0D.EFG

 

A Her mother was Ethan Allen's wife # A.

 

B Last digit of year in which Fanny's father died.

 

C Last 3 digits of the year in which Fanny turned 2.

 

D last digit of the year in which Fanny died.

 

E Last digit of the year her mother remarried Dr. Penniman.

 

F Number of years Fanny was a nun.

 

G number of years Fanny worked at the Fanny Allen Hospital

 

You are looking for a Canadian pill bottle with a child proof cap. You can't make this stuff up. It was divinely chosen.

 

FTF congratulations go to yo-hg.

 

Please leave the stone or something else heavy in the cc so it stays in place.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Trb boivbhf

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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