In Philadelphia, the casket of John F. Reynolds arrives by steamboat onto the docks. His family is waiting for him and his staff, as they prepare to take him to his sister Catharine’s house.
Catharine Ferree Reynolds Landis and her husband Capt. Henry Landis invited the family to their house in Philadelphia. As they were preparing for the casket to be moved to Lancaster for the burial, there was a knock on the door at her house on Spruce Street. When they answered it, there was a beautiful young woman standing outside her door.
Ms. Kate Hewitt was standing on her front steps. She had tears in her eyes and dressed in black. She had learned of her fiancée’s death in the newspaper on July 2nd. She was welcomed into the house by his sisters Kate and Ellie. They knew that their brother was in love with a woman with an inscribed ring on his pinkie finger and the crucifix. However, they didn’t know that she was Catholic.
A day later, General Reynolds casket, his staff, his family, and Ms. Hewitt arrived in his beloved hometown of Lancaster. On Independence Day, the Union was celebrating the greatest victory at Gettysburg, and burying their deceased. However, in Lancaster, Major General John F. Reynolds was laid to rest in the family plot in the Lancaster Cemetery.
After the ceremony, his sisters Kate and Ellie remember that Ms. Hewitt was devastated and it was crippling to watch her life end with his death. After she left Lancaster, Ms. Kate Hewitt arrived in Emmitsburg, Maryland, just a few miles south of where he was shot in Gettysburg. She joined the Daughters of Mercy in Emmitsburg.
She kept her word that if John Reynolds died in the Civil War, she’d join the order to dedicate her life for the taking care of the poor and the sick. In the church, she was known as Sister Hildegardis. Eight months after the death of her love, she completed the postulancy and entered the order. It took her forever though to remove John’s West Point ring from her finger, and it broke her heart when she did so. She thrived within the Daughters of Charity as a Sister. The sisters of John Reynolds regularly sent letters and kept in contact with their brothers fiancée.
However, after years within the Daughters of Charity, Sister Hildegardis was transferred northward to Albany, New York. There, she taught at a Catholic School. In September 1868, almost five and half years after Reynolds death, she left the order. She continued to teach though at various schools and while teaching, fell in love with another man. This gentleman was a florist named Joseph Pfordt. They married in 1874, and two years later, she would pass away due to tuberculous. Kate Hewitt was known as a loving wife, a devoted Christian woman, and someone who worked within the Daughters of Charity in Emmitsburg, Maryland.