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On April 25, 2012, Bishop Scott Benhase declared that Deaconess Ruth Byllesby had been added to the list of saints in the Diocese of Georgia.1 He made the announcement at Christ Church Parish in Augusta, Georgia, where Ruth Byllesby had served from 1927 to 1943. Christ Church, on the corner of Greene and Eve Streets, is in the middle of the Harrisburg area of Augusta and was home to many cotton mill workers. The deaconess had helped to sustain, both materially and emotionally, Harrisburg's poor and unemployed families through the hardships of the Great Depression.2 Ruth Byllesby considered this the ministry a deaconess was called to do.3 While deaconesses serving on reservations with indigenous peoples or in foreign missions have received more attention, most deaconesses were involved in urban ministries. Unfortunately, most Episcopalians have no idea that deaconesses ever existed or what these women brought to the church. Although Ruth Byllesby and other deaconesses were public figures, doing ministries in the community or parish and wearing distinctive garb, they were often elusive in the records and written accounts of the church.4 Exploring Ruth Byllesby's life may help restore some of these ministries to their proper place in Episcopal Church history.5 It may also provide context for recent attempts to turn the attention of Episcopalians towards service in their communities.
Tracing the lives of deaconesses is difficult because they did not fit into church structures designed to track male clergy and male parish officers. The church treated women as "auxiliaries," often interpreting the deaconess ministry as an extension of woman's domestic roles, and thus not noteworthy. In one cringe-worthy talk, given by a bishop in 1937 at the triennial meeting of deaconesses, the bishop included being able to "keep house nicely" and being "hospitable" but "not so much so as to run into debt entertaining!" as essential traits for a deaconess. Bishops began "setting apart" women as deaconesses to help with parish visiting, teaching classes, and running hospitals or orphanages shortly before the Civil War, but the ministry was not formalized as an order of the church until the passage of the deaconess canon in 1889. Focused on a servant ministry, deaconesses were often reluctant to reveal their personal lives, and professionalism restricted what they would...