IO The Francis A. Drexel Family 
Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, became the spiritual 
mother of many daughters whose work for the Indian and 
Negro races is co-extensive with the length and breadth 
of our Country. 
The Levering-Keyser-Lehman-Langstroth strands 
woven inextricably into the warp and woof of pioneer 
Pennsylvania did much to fix the pattern of sturdy self- 
reliance, industry, thrift, integrity and God-fearing neigh­ 
borliness which is so marked in the life of the early and 
later settlers of Germantown and its surroundings. 
God blessed the marriage of Francis A. Drexel and 
Hannah Jane Langstroth on August 27, 1855 with the 
gift of a daughter, named Elizabeth Langstroth for her 
maternal grandmother and repeated this blessing Novem­ 
ber 26, 1858 by another daughter. This infant was bap­ 
tised on December 29, 1858 by Rev. C. H. Carter in the 
Church of the Assumption, Philadelphia, Pa., her uncle 
Joseph W. Drexel and her aunt Mary J. Drexel Lankenau 
being the god-parents. She was named Katharine Mary 
for her paternal grandmother. Who has written the line: 
"Thou art a precious child, thy coming broke the parent 
vine"?—this second daughter was a "precious child" in 
that she "broke the parent vine," for on December 30, 
1858, Mrs. Francis A. Drexel (Hannah Jane Lang­ 
stroth) passed into the life beyond. 
A letter from Francis A. Drexel to a cousin tells of the 
sad event. 
December 30, 1858 
My dear Cousin Tony: 
I have just received your very kind and sympathetic note and 
feel deeply grateful for it. 
I am again alone in the world with two children, the youngest 
five weeks old—my bereavement, though very afflicting, lately had 
not been unexpected. After three weeks intense suffering, although 
she may have been unconscious of it having lost her reason, my