Abbreviation "E de M" on Death Notice and Memorial Card

eblanab

I have a memorial card for a young lady who died in Co Cork in 1933, which has "E de M" under her name. The same abbreviation appears in her death notice in the Examiner. Does anyone have an idea as to what this might relate?

Evermore1980

Hi, it means Enfant de Marie (child of Mary in French) I’ve seen this on old Catholic cards too for deceased women

eblanab

Many thanks for your prompt and very welcome reply, Evermore1980.

VirginiaB

That was likely a sodality. I had several classmates at university who belonged to The Children of Mary Sodality. From their website, rscj.org, it was founded in the 1830s by Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat. The religious order she founded started and staffed a number of well-regatded academies and colleges/universities in the US. Many of these religious were of Irish birth or origin. Archives of religious orders can be a good source of genealogical information.

The religious order was French; hence the sodality their students belonged to was Enfants de Marie—Children of Mary.

My classmates were very proud of their membership. I’m not surprised to see it on this woman’s holy card (as we called them).

cobham

I was in a Loreto convent and there was a Child of Mary scroll with members listed hanging in corridor. The girls wore a blue ribbon with a medal over their uniforms. For some reason it was not offered to our class!

I researched a great gran aunt who ended up in a Presentation order in America in 1873. The order had no information on her background. A nun in another order said that the earlier lives of nuns was of no interest once they become professed. Taking a new name at that time did not help but the census in USA recorded her surname along with her new religious names.