A healthy dose of curiosity and a love of research has led a deacon to uncover information that revises accepted Episcopal Church history.
Prompted by her dedication to the diaconate, the Rev. Daphne B. Noyes, a deacon of the Diocese of Massachusetts, researched the life and ministry of Adeline Blanchard Tyler — Civil War nurse, teacher, and one of the four original deaconesses in the Episcopal Church.
In 1856 Tyler left her home in Boston to head St. Andrew’s Infirmary in Baltimore. Noyes’s research uncovered that Tyler and three friends were set apart — the phrase used at that time — as deaconesses a full year before what has been commonly held.
“I believe that she and three others were set apart in 1856, not 1857,” she said. “There is strong supporting evidence.”
Noyes said Tyler was “a widow and 50 years old at the time. The setting apart took place on September 21, 1856, St. Matthew’s Day. The other three women were Caroline Elizabeth Guild, 28, her friend and fellow parishioner at the Church of the Advent in Boston, 28; Evaline Black, 21; and Catherine (Kate) Minard, 19.” Minard founded the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in 1863.
Tyler was a schoolteacher. She met and married John Tyler, a widower who was twice her age and the father of four children. Her husband became ill after one year. “He was mobility-impaired, and she took care of him,” Noyes said. “That was the beginning of her nursing experience.”
This hands-on training led Tyler to work in military hospitals during the Civil War, caring for Union and Confederate soldiers in Baltimore; Chester, Pennsylvania; and Annapolis, Maryland, until May 1864. This experience, Noyes learned, “took a toll on her. She saw the horrors of war.”
Noyes, ordained a deacon in 2001 in the Diocese of Massachusetts, is a 1995 Church-history graduate of Episcopal Divinity School, so it was natural for her to be intrigued by the deaconess movement.
“I’m coming up on two years with my research,” she said. “I first heard about Tyler from Deacon Geri Swanson in a presentation she was doing for CEEP” (now known as the Episcopal Parish Network).
Noyes noted a personal parallel. “Adeline Tyler was a parishioner at the Church of the Advent, where I was deacon for 14 years, yet I never heard of her,” she said. “My research started at my kitchen table during the pandemic lockdown.”
Noyes’s quest led her on a journey of geography and archives. She investigated letters, journals, and institutional records, as well as previously published histories. Among her many sources were the Maryland Center for History and Culture; the Diocese of Maryland’s archives; Church of the Advent; and the renowned Boston Children’s Hospital, where Noyes searched through more than 100 letters from when Tyler was the hospital’s first lady superintendent (1869-72).
“I’ve met with descendants of Adeline’s family (by marriage, as she had no children herself) and we have shared various resources with them,” Noyes said. “Adeline’s name crops up on various reports to General Convention, available at the Archives of the Episcopal Church.”
A 47-minute video, directed and narrated by Noyes, chronicles her research, as well as Tyler’s detailed history. “The words are primarily from those who knew Adeline best, and from Adeline herself, interwoven with a smattering of my words for context and continuity.”
Noyes shared an insight she learned from Tyler that has remained with her. “Her overwhelming desire to serve Jesus in the sick, the poor, and the destitute helped her amidst the difficulties of this world.”
Noyes is not done. “Much of my research will form the basis for a chapter in an upcoming textbook on diaconal studies,” she said. “I want to use what I have found to bring long-overdue recognition to Adeline and the other earliest Episcopal deaconesses, and to correct some of the erroneous information that has found its way into print. I hope the fruits of my labors will be of use to other scholars of the deaconess movement and will help inform contemporary understanding and practice of diakonia.”
In a former version of this article, we incorrectly identified Daphne Noyes. She retired as a deacon at the Church of the Advent, Boston, in 2020.