Community of Saint Mary

The Community of St. Mary (CSM) is an Anglican religious order of nuns with independent houses located in Greenwich, New York, Sewanee, Tennessee, Mukwonago, Wisconsin, and also in Malawi and the Philippines.

The oldest indigenous Anglican order in the United States, it was founded in New York City in 1865 by Harriet Starr Cannon and a small group of fellow nuns. It was formally constituted by Bishop Horatio Potter of New York as the Sisters of St. Mary. The Episcopal Church was initially slow to recognize the order, and they only found wide support after four of the sisters died nursing victims of a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee in 1878. These four sisters are now commemorated by the Episcopal Church on September 9 as the Martyrs of Memphis or as Constance and her Companions. The community now consists of three independent provinces: Eastern, Western, and Southern.

Their rule of life is very similar to the Benedictine rule, and they live a mixed life of prayer and service. The sisters pray five offices each day, and their Monastic Diurnal Revised is a popular prayer book for many outside of the community as well. From their foundation in 1865 the first sisters took charge of the "House of Mercy" in New York. Then and now the sisters have felt called to the care of "the lost, forgotten, and underprivileged" after the example of many Christian saints, including St Vincent de Paul. In 2008 this connection proved sufficiently strong for the American branch of the Sisters of Charity to amalgamate with the Community of St Mary. These Vincentian (Rule of St Vincent de Paul) sisters are now a fully integrated part of the Southern Province of CSM.

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