Hannah Grier Coome
| Hannah Grier Coome | |
|---|---|
| Born | 28 October 1837 Carrying Place, Upper Canada |
| Died | 9 February 1921 Toronto, Ontario |
| Venerated in | Anglican Church of Canada |
| Feast | 9 February |
Hannah Grier Coome (October 28, 1837 – February 9, 1921) founded the Anglican Sisterhood of St. John the Divine, and was its first mother superior.
Sarah Hannah Roberta Grier was born in the Carrying Place, Upper Canada, to Rev. John Grier, a high church Anglican minister who had emigrated from Ireland in 1923 and been ordained in Quebec, and his wife Eliza Lilias Geddes. Hannah (as she preferred) was their third daughter and sixth child. Her parents took responsibility for her education at home, which also for a time was in Belleville. One sister, Rose Jane Elizabeth Grier, became a teacher, and ultimately principal of the Bishop Strachan School in Toronto. On July 23, 1859, Hannah married civil engineer Charles Horace Coome, who worked on the Grand Trunk Railway, and the couple initially lived in Kingston.
In 1862 Charles Coome accepted an engineering job in Britain, and the couple moved across the Atlantic. While in Britain, Hannah Coome became acquainted with the Oxford Movement as well as the Community of St Mary the Virgin in Wantage and felt drawn to mission work. She also became pregnant, but lost what would be her only child after a severe fall which also required a long convalescence.
The couple returned to North America in 1876, but a year later, Charles Coome died in Chicago. Hannah Coome continued to live in the American city with a nephew and a brother for several years, and supported herself by teaching Decorative Art, as well as by embroidering hangings and other decorations for churches.
Nonetheless, by 1881, Hannah Coome considered entering a religious community, especially returning Wantage, England to join the Community of St. Mary the Virgin. Instead, at a party arranged by her sister Rose as she went to Toronto in 1881, Hannah Coome met Reverend Ogden Pulteney Ford (high churchman and priest at three parishes in Toronto) and Georgina Broughall (wife of the rector of St. Stephen in the Fields Church), who told her about their plans to form a similar sisterhood there in Toronto. The Canadian group also held an organizational meeting and others in the winter.
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