Remembering Tuolumne…..

By Joseph Celentano, TCMM Research Committee

Internet E-mail: research@TuolumneMuseum.org

On August 2, 2002, Sister Mary Claire Antoine (Juanita) Rozier passed away at Notre Dame, Indiana at age 90.

Juanita was the fifth child and fourth daughter of long time Tuolumne residents William and Mary Rozier. Her brother was Alfred William Rozier Jr, born December 10, 1909. He died one month after his birth of whooping cough. Little Alfred was the start of the family plot at Carters Cemetery. Juanita's sisters were Marie Rozier, Madeline Rozier Poe and Frances Rozier McNeill. Frances is the only surviving child of William and Mary.

Juanita was born in Tuolumne on February 14, 1912 in the house her father built in 1906 in Old Town. She began her schooling at Summerville Elementary, and in September of 1925, following her graduation, she entered Holy Rosary Academy in Woodland. She returned to Tuolumne for her senior year of High School and graduated in 1929 with students who had been her classmates at the elementary school.

Claire Antoine, as she would be legally known later on, had made up her mind to enter the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross whose Mother House is in Indiana. Since she was not yet 18, she attended San Francisco Teachers College for a year. After that, she entered the Novitiate and began her studies at St. Mary's College, intent upon becoming a teacher. She would have liked to become a physician, but at that time women doctors were few and far between.

Her practice teaching was done in East Chicago and South Bend before taking her first vows in January 1933. Subsequently, she was sent to Los Angeles where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree at Immaculate Heart College by taking night and summer classes. In the meantime, she taught at different parochial schools in Southern California. Later, over a twelve-year period, she was a science teacher, then principal, at Judge Memorial High School in Salt Lake City.

Sister Claire Antoine Rozier, C.S.C., earned her Master's degree in Science at Creighton University at Omaha, Nebraska. Then, after a stint of teaching in Idaho, she returned to Los Angeles where she taught for four years at Bishop Conaty High School. Later she became the first woman to join the all male faculty at Cathedral, an all-male high school. After that, she spent shorter periods at different schools in California before going to Central Catholic High School in Modesto. In 1968, she received the Outstanding Biology Teacher award for California from the National Science Foundation Teachers. She has also been the recipient of several National Association of Biology grants. Upon her retirement in 1984, the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross assigned Sister Clair Antoine to the Diocese of Stockton. This had enabled her to divide her time and attention between her two eldest sisters, Madeline and Marie.

For over 130 years, the Rozier Family has been leaving its mark on Tuolumne County. Three generations have participated in the Gold Rush, contributed to the education of countless numbers of children and demonstrated their abiding love of their Catholic Faith. In 1940, years after the county road adjoining the communities of Tuolumne and Sonora was relocated, the former public road, where it intersects Pine Street in Tuolumne was renamed Rozier Avenue, thereby paying homage to one of the county's most loved families.

(Excerpts from CHISPA, Vol 27, No 4, April-June 1988, written by Mary Grace Paquette.)

And, thus another page turns in the history of Remembering Tuolumne.