Cool Historic Catholics of America - series announcement!

I'm a very distract-able amateur historian. I love stories, and I especially love real life stories.

Spending a lot of time among historic newspapers, diaries, and other fragments of the past means that I hear a lot of whispers and echos of stories of everyday people who lived extraordinary lives.
Sometimes the stories were about one amazing event in their life. Sometimes it was the unlikeliness of their circumstances that led to their memory getting passed down.

It occurred to me there are probably stories of people in my own faith tradition that are still living in that whisper and echo place. Where local people know the story like an old friend, but someone on the other side of the country have never even heard of their name.

While Catholics are a huge population globally, they are not spread evenly across the United States. The US is a young country with spotty historical records. Yet I challenged myself to find someone from every state in the US, plus Washington DC, who was either in the pipeline for sainthood or was just a cool historic Catholic person.

I specifically wanted to find those stories that are often passed over. Most of them are not clergy or bishops. I sought after the stories of women, minorities, young people, and those who are not well known. Some of them are widely beloved, and some are controversial figures. They are required to be historic - so no living people are on this list. Their time will come!

While I love them too, you won't find saints like Elizabeth Ann Seton or Kateri Tekakwitha on this list. This is about the people you might not have heard of before.
Some states had a plethora of amazing stories to choose from. Some I had to really dig to find any names.

I tried to assign people to the state of their formation or to where they did the brunt of their work. Many people impacted multiple states, so sometimes it was an editorial call as to which state I would have them represent.

I'll be releasing the whole list 4-6 states at a time so I can do as much justice to their stories as possible. Feel free to comment on other Catholic people from their states that have their own amazing, yet largely unknown, story. Perhaps we'll do a bonus list!

So check back in the next few weeks as I release the list! In alphabetical order. Because I've been through multiple iterations of grouping, and trust me this is just the best way.

Updates with each portion of the list can be found here:

Alabama to Arkansas
California to Connecticut 
Delaware to Georgia