James Nicholas Joubert

James Mary Hector Nicholas Joubert de la Muraille, PSS (September 6, 1777, France – 1843, Baltimore) was a French Catholic priest in the United States. A teacher at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, he co-founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence along with Mary Lange. He was a member of the Sulpicians.

Biography

Early life Joubert was born at Saint Jean d'Angely on the west coast of France on September 6, 1777. His parents were John Joseph Mary Joubert, and the former Suzanne Claire Cathering Guimbaut. His father was a lawyer.

When he was twelve years old, he was enrolled in the military school at Rebois-en-Brie. Upon graduation young Joubert entered the military until after a few years he went to work in the tax office. In 1800, at the age of twenty-three, he was posted to Saint-Domingue. When the Haitian Revolution broke out in 1803 and a number of his relatives were killed, Joubert and his uncle, C. Joubert de Maine, fled first to Cuba and then to the United States.

Baltimore

He eventually found his way to Baltimore, Maryland, where obtained work teaching geography in Madame LeCombe’s fashionable school for girls. Shortly after, he became a Sulpician. While English was used in the upper chapel, the language favored in the lower chapel was French, as many of the congregation were refugees from Saint-Domingue. Joubert was introduced to two African American women who were members of the Lower Chapel, Elizabeth Clarisse Lange and Marie Magdelaine Balas, They told him that they were interested in establishing a community of African-American Catholic nuns.

Joubert would provide direction, be chaplain, solicit financial assistance, and encourage other "women of color” to become members of this, the first religious congregation of women of color in the history of the US Catholic Church. Joubert records in his diary, that after learning that a mob of Know-Nothings had burned a convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, he and two other priests spent the night of October 8, 1834 sleeping in the parlor of the Oblates' convent. While Mother Lange continued to manage the order's flagship St. Frances Academy, Joubert devoted his efforts to finding the funds to keep it going.

Joubert resided at St. Mary's Seminary until his death in late 1843.