Br. Goswin Ambrose

Charles S. Moise was born on March 28, 1860, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Charles Henry and Mathilde Jane Vaughn Moise. His mother was a devout Catholic and his father a devout Jew. Charles was enrolled in St. Mary's School in New Orleans where he first encountered the Christian Brothers. He made a decision to enter the life of the Brothers, which his father, a noted artist, opposed. The Daily Picayune reported that young Charles ran away from home and was found in Memphis. Shortly thereafter, Charles entered the Novitiate at Carondelet in January of 1876, and received the habit of the Brothers and the religious name of Brother Goswin Ambrose in March of that same year as he entered the Novitiate at Carondelet. His first teaching assignment was at St. John's in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, where he spent only one year before moving to Christian Brothers College in St. Joseph, Missouri. In 1878 he was assigned to teach at the Novitiate at Carondelet but the following year was assigned to St. Patrick's High School in Chicago. Six years later in August of 1885 he was assigned to CBC Memphis but returned to the College in St. Louis a year later. He remained there until 1888 when he was assigned as Director of the Juniorate in Glencoe. The following year, 1898 he was named Sub-Director in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in 1892 he was assigned to teach at De La Salle in Chicago. The next year he was named Director there but two years later in 1895 he returned to CBC in St. Louis. In 1899 he served as Sub-Director of the Brothers Community in his home city, New Orleans. He was named Director in St. Paul in 1900 and again in Chicago in 1907. He returned to CBC and St. Louis in 1909 and died there in August. Brother Goswin Ambrose was an accomplished poet, playwright and singer. His masterpiece, "Satan in Arms Against Columbus", was written in 1892 and was presented at the World's Fair that year. It was printed in paperback and some are still in existence. His outstanding poem, was entitled, "Roseline Fay", which he also wrote under his nom de plume, Sidney Theodore Vaughn. He was pleased, before his death, to see his father convert to Catholicism. He was forty-nine years of age when he died and had been a De La Salle Christian Brother for thirty-three years.