Spirit of Inclusion

Cranaleith Spir­itu­al Cen­ter in Somer­ton didn’t ex­ist in 1920 when the states rat­i­fied the 19th Amend­ment, but a Vic­tori­an farm­house on the spir­itu­al cen­ter’s 10-acre cam­pus stood back then and once served as a vi­tal meet­ing place for lead­ing suf­fra­gists in­clud­ing Susan B. An­thony and its own­er, Rachel Foster Avery, dur­ing a peri­od in Amer­ic­an his­tory when wo­men were dis­cour­aged and banned from meet­ing openly. In fact, Avery, the daugh­ter of a wealthy Pitt­s­burgh news­pa­per ed­it­or, had built the house largely for that pur­pose.

On Oct. 29, Cranaleith will cel­eb­rate the re­cent se­lec­tion of the home for in­clu­sion on the Na­tion­al Re­gister of His­tor­ic Places. The pub­lic is in­vited to a day-long Wo­men of Strength and Vis­ion pro­gram fea­tur­ing tours, his­tor­ic­al reen­act­ments, guest speak­ers and a pan­el dis­cus­sion. In ad­di­tion to high­light­ing the site’s his­tor­ic­al con­nec­tion to wo­men’s suf­frage, the pro­gram will ex­plore how the work of its present-day own­ers, the Sis­ters of Mercy, con­tin­ues to ad­voc­ate for strong wo­men of con­vic­tion.

“It’s an on­go­ing move­ment. It’s a move­ment of the spir­it for in­clu­sion,” said Sis­ter Mary Train­er, whose fam­ily owned and oc­cu­pied the house for 90 years be­fore donat­ing it to her re­li­gious or­der in 1996.

The home sits on a hill at Proc­tor Road and Edis­on Av­en­ue in the Old Somer­ton sec­tion. In 1890, the fin­an­cially in­de­pend­ent Avery chose the bu­col­ic yet ac­cess­ible site to build a home for her grow­ing fam­ily. She was liv­ing in the city’s Spring Garden sec­tion at the time and had close pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al bonds with An­thony.

Avery’s par­ents, J. Her­on and Ju­lia Manuel Foster, were both staunch ab­ol­i­tion­ists and pro­gress­ive act­iv­ists. J. Her­on Foster died when his daugh­ter was 10 years old but his in­flu­ence en­dured as Rachel joined the wo­men’s suf­frage move­ment. She met An­thony dur­ing the 1879 con­ven­tion of the Na­tion­al Wo­men’s Suf­frage As­so­ci­ation and be­came the or­gan­iz­a­tion’s cor­res­pond­ing sec­ret­ary with­in a year. She began re­fer­ring to An­thony as Aunt Susan, while An­thony con­sidered her a pro­tege and pos­sible suc­cessor.

A dec­ade later, Avery se­lec­ted an­oth­er prom­in­ent and out­spoken Phil­adelphia wo­man to build her house, ar­chi­tect Min­erva Park­er Nich­olas. It was de­signed in a Vic­tori­an shingle style and com­pleted in 1891 with stone and wood shingle ex­ter­i­or and large gables. It is three stor­ies and fea­tures a par­lor, mu­sic room and lib­rary.

The home be­came a reg­u­lar stop for An­thony and oth­er lead­ing suf­fra­gists such as Anna Howard Shaw and Lucy E. An­thony. In 1895, Avery led an ef­fort to es­tab­lish an $800 an­nu­ity to be­ne­fit the aging Susan B. An­thony, who used Avery’s home to write let­ters of thanks to the fund’s 202 in­di­vidu­al donors.

The home’s dir­ect con­nec­tion to the suf­fra­gists was a re­l­at­ively brief one in re­la­tion to its ten­ure as a seat of the loc­ally prom­in­ent Train­er fam­ily.

Joseph C. Train­er, a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man from South Phil­adelphia, bought the prop­erty as a sum­mer es­tate in 1906 and farmed the sur­round­ing fields, which at one time spanned dozens of acres. He named the es­tate Cranaleith, an Ir­ish Gael­ic term mean­ing “sanc­tu­ary of trees,” in homage to his an­ces­try.

The site soon be­came his fam­ily’s primary home. Joseph C. Train­er also be­came a prom­in­ent loc­al fig­ure in the Re­pub­lic­an Party and in the 1930s served three terms in the Pennsylvania Sen­ate.

Train­er and his wife Wil­helmina had sev­en sons. The fourth, Fran­cis Henry “Frank” Train­er, later settled in­to the house with his wife, Mary, as they raised four chil­dren and per­petu­ated the fam­ily tra­di­tions of cul­tiv­at­ing the land and com­munity en­gage­ment. The fu­ture Sis­ter Mary Train­er was the eld­est of the chil­dren.

“Even then, we were tak­ing care of the land. We had grapes and made grape jelly. Every day you had to work un­til lunch. The nur­tur­ing of the land was im­port­ant,” said Kath­ie Ul­in­ski, the third of the four sib­lings.

They saved the af­ter­noons and Sundays for fun and the whole neigh­bor­hood was in­vited.

“The kids played in the barn and the woods. We had Moses, a don­key. He was a smart don­key. We ice skated on the pond. The kids thought of it as their own,” Ul­in­ski said.

Through the 20th cen­tury, the Train­ers pre­served the ori­gin­al char­ac­ter of the house, al­though the Great De­pres­sion forced the fam­ily to sell much of its land hold­ings. Later, Joseph C. Train­er’s sons jointly donated ad­di­tion­al acre­age for the es­tab­lish­ment of St. Chris­toph­er Cath­ol­ic Church on Proc­tor Road.

“The beauty of this fam­ily’s home is they didn’t make many changes. There are still fire­places in al­most every room,” said Ruth Pi­cozzi, a neigh­bor and long­time vo­lun­teer for the spir­itu­al cen­ter.

With his chil­dren grown, the wid­owed Frank Train­er donated the es­tate to his daugh­ter Mary’s re­li­gious or­der in 1996. The spir­itu­al cen­ter opened two years later. Frank Train­er al­ways held a strong in­terest in study­ing and pre­serving the his­tory of the home, ac­cord­ing to Sis­ter Mary Train­er.

“Our fam­ily took great pride in stew­ard­ship and it car­ried on that tra­di­tion of con­cern for all people,” she said.

Today, Cranaleith of­fers fa­cil­it­ies and pro­gram­ming serving guests from a broad spec­trum of back­grounds and per­son­al con­di­tions.

“We reach out to the com­munity,” said Ex­ec­ut­ive Dir­ect­or Ven­eta Lor­raine. “We’ve had four Eagle Scout pro­jects here. We work with vet­er­ans groups. A lot of our neigh­bors be­come vo­lun­teers. We work with those in (ad­dic­tion) re­cov­ery and people with cog­nit­ive dis­ab­il­it­ies.”

Cranaleith hosts non-de­nom­in­a­tion­al spir­itu­al­ity re­treats as well as cor­por­ate con­fer­ences and team-build­ing pro­grams.

“Cranaleith is a place where people come to be re­stored, to re­new their spir­it and to come home to them­selves,” Lor­raine said. “¢”¢

For in­form­a­tion about the Cranaleith Spir­itu­al Cen­ter and to re­gister for the Wo­men of Strength and Vis­ion pro­gram, vis­it cranaleith.org or call 215-934-6206.

You can reach William Kenny at wkenny@bsmphilly.com.

Northeast Times, October 11, 2016