Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne
Exterior of Rosary Hill Home in Hawthorne, New York
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| Abbreviation | O.P. |
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| Motto | "the Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer" |
| Formation | c. AD 1900 |
| Founder | Rose Hawthorne Lathrop |
| Type | Catholic religious order |
| Headquarters | Rosary Hill Home in Hawthorne, New York |
| Website | hawthorne-dominicans |
The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne are a Roman Catholic congregation of Religious Sisters, who are a part of the Third Order of Saint Dominic. The Congregation was founded on December 8, 1900, by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, a daughter of the famed novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. They specialize in caring for those suffering from terminal cancer and have no financial resources.
Early in life, Rose Hawthorne married George Parsons Lathrop, both of whom converted to Roman Catholicism in 1891. Rose had seemingly married well as a young woman, and they moved from her native Massachusetts to New York City and then to Connecticut after their marriage. Unfortunately her husband soon turned out to be unreliable and difficult. Eventually she was driven in 1895 to seek permission from the Church to live apart from him, and this was granted.
Finding herself alone and with few financial resources, she began to seek some meaning to her life. She learned of the sorry plight of the poor who were diagnosed with incurable cancer. At the time, this disease was believed by many to be highly contagious, so there was a deep fear of contact with those suffering from this affliction. Lathrop soon found a special vocation to this work.
In the fall of 1896, after having taken a three-month nursing course at New York's Cancer Hospital, Lathrop moved into a three-room cold-water flat on New York City's impoverished Lower East Side and began to nurse the poor with incurable cancer. In March 1898 Alice Huber, having responded to an article Lathrop had written about her work, joined her in this service. Shortly afterwards Rose's husband George died. As others came to join them, Lathrop was inspired to found a religious congregation. One of her early supporters was Josephine Lazarus, sister of the poet Emma Lazarus who had been Rose's friend until her death from cancer.
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