Notre Dame, Congregations of.—
I. CONGREGATION OF NOTRE DAME DE MONTREAL
—Marguerite Bourgeoys, the foundress, was born at Troyes, France, April 17, 1620. She was the third child of Abraham Bourgeois, a merchant, and Guillemette Garnier, his wife. In 1653 Paul Chomody de Maisonneuve, the founder of Ville Marie (Montreal), visited Troyes, and invited her to go to Canada to teach; she set out in June of that year, arrived at Ville Marie, and devoted herself to every form of works of mercy. She opened her first school on April 30, 1657, but soon had to return to France for recruits, where four companions joined her. A boarding school and an industrial school were opened and sodalities were founded. In 1670 the foundress went back to France and returned in 1672 with letters from King Louis XIV and also with six new companions. In 1675 she built a chapel dedicated to Notre Dame de Bon Secours. To insure greater freedom of action Mother Bourgeoys founded an uncloistered community, its members bound only by simple vows. They had chosen July 2, as their patronal feast-day. Modeling their lives on that of Our Lady after the Ascension of Our Lord, they aided the pastors in the various parishes where convents of the order had been established, by instructing children.
Although the community had received the approbation of the Bishop of Quebec, the foundress became very desirous of having the conditions of non-enclosure and simple vows embodied in a rule. To confer with the bishop, who was then in France, she undertook a third journey to Europe. She returned the next year, and resisted the many attempts made in the next few years to merge the new order in that of the Ursulines, or otherwise to change its original character. In 1683 a mission on Mount Royal was opened for the instruction of Indian girls. This mission, under the auspices of the priests of St. Sulpice, was removed in 1701 to Sault au Recollet, and in 1720 to the Lake of Two Mountains. It still exists. The two towers still standing on the grounds of Montreal College were part of a stone fort built to protect the colony from the attacks of their enemies; they were expressly erected for the sisters of that mission: one for their residence, the other for their classes.
The sisters continued their labors in the schools of Ville Marie and also prepared a number of young women as Christian teachers. Houses were opened at Pointe-aux-Trembles, near Montreal, at Lachine, at Champlain and Chateau Richer. In 1685 a mission was established at Sainte Famille on the Island of Orleans and was so successful that Msgr. de St. Vallier, Bishop of Quebec, invited the sisters to open houses in that settlement, which was done. In 1689 he desired to confer with Mother Bourgeoys in regard to a project of foundation. Though sixty-nine years of age, she set out at once on the long and perilous journey on foot to Quebec, and had to suffer all the inconveniences of an April thaw. Acceding to the demands of the bishop for the new foundation, she had the double consolation of obedience to her superior, and of keeping her sisters in their true vocation when, only four years later, the bishop himself became convinced that such was necessary. Mother Bourgeoys asked repeatedly to be discharged from the superiorship, but not until 1693 did the bishop accede to her petition. Eventually on June 24, 1698, the rule and constitution of the congregation, based upon those which the foundress had gathered from various sources, were formally accepted by the members. The next day they made their vows. The superior at the time was Mother of the Assumption (Barbier). Mother Bourgeoys devoted the remainder of her life to the preparation of points of advice for the guidance of her sisterhood. She died on January 12, 1700. On December 7, 1878, she was declared venerable. The proclamation of the heroicity of the virtues of the Venerable Marguerite Bourgeoys was officially made in Rome, June 19, 1910. In 1701 the community numbered fifty-four members. The nuns were self-supporting and, on this consideration, the number of subjects was not limited by the French Government, as was the case with all the other existing communities. The conflagration which ravaged Montreal in 1768 destroyed the mother-house, which had been erected eighty-five years before. The chapel of Bon Secours, built by Mother Bourgeoys, was destroyed by fire in 1754, and rebuilt by the Seminary of St. Sulpice in 1771.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, missions were established in various parishes of the Provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and in the United States; also, many new academies and schools were opened in the city of Montreal. The normal school in Montreal, under the direction of the congregation, begun in 1899, has worthily realized the hopes founded upon it. Of its three hundred and eighteen graduates, authorized to teach in the schools of Quebec, one hundred and eighty-four are actually employed there. The house, built after the fire of 1768, was demolished in 1844 to give place to a larger building. A still more commodious one was erected in 1880. This was burned down in 1893, obliging the community to return to the house on St. Jean-Baptiste Street. A new building was erected on Sherbrooke Street, and here the Sisters have been installed since 1908. The Notre Dame Ladies’ College was inaugurated in 1908. Today the institute, whose rules have been definitively, approved by the Holy See, counts 131 convents in 21 dioceses, 1479 professed sisters, over 200 novices, 36 postulants, and upwards of 35,000 pupils.
The school system of the Congregation of Notre Dame de Montreal always comprised day-schools and boarding-schools. The pioneers of Canada had to clear the forest, to cultivate the land, and to prepare homes for their families. They were all of an intelligent class of farmers and artisans, who felt that a Christian education was the best legacy they could leave their children; therefore they seized the opportunity afforded them by the nascent Congregation of Notre Dame, to place their daughters in boarding-schools. The work, inaugurated in Canada, led to demands for houses of the congregation in many totally English parishes of the United States.
The schools of the Congregation of Notre Dame everywhere give instruction in all fundamental branches. The real advantages developed by the systematic study of psychology and pedagogy have been fully turned to account. The system begins with the kindergarten, and the courses are afterwards graded as elementary, model, commercial, academic, and collegiate. The first college opened was in Nova Scotia at Antigonish, affiliated with the university for young men in the same place: since the early years of its foundation it has annually seen a number of Bachelors of Arts among its graduating students. In 1909 the Notre Dame Ladies’ College, in affiliation with Laval, was inaugurated in Montreal. The fine arts are taught in all the secondary schools and academies, while in the larger and more central houses these branches are carried to greater perfection by competent professors. The teaching from the very elements is in conformity with the best methods of the day.
—SISTER ST. EUPHROSINE.
II. CONGREGATION OF NOTRE-DAME DE SION
… a religious institute of women, founded at Paris in May, 1843, by Marie-Theodore and Maria Alphonse Ratisbonne (q.v.). Theodore, at that time sub-director of the Archconfraternity of Our Lady of Victories, se-cured from Gregory XVI permission to work among the Jews for their conversion. His brother Marie-Alphonse was equally zealous and they established a congregation of sisters under the patronage of Our Lady of Sion, with its mother-house at Paris. The new body received warm encouragement from Msgr. Affre, Msgr. Sibour, and Cardinal Fornari, and, on January 15, 1847, Pius IX showed his approbation of the work by granting many indulgences to the institute. Foundations were made in the Holy Land, the chief being the convent, orphan asylum, and school, near the Ecce Homo arch in Jerusalem. That of St. John’s in the Mountains was founded from it. Connected with the orphanage in Jerusalem under the patronage of St. Peter are schools of art and manual-training. At the Ecce Homo there are 170 pupils, Jews, Mohammedans, and Greek schismatics, besides 100 day scholars.
There are foundations in London and also at Rome, Grandbourg near Versailles, Trieste, Vienna, Prague, Galatz, Bucharest, Jassy, Constantinople, Kadi-Koi, etc. At Munich the “Sionsverein” for the support of poor children in Palestine was founded in 1865 through the instrumentality of Baroness Therese von Gumppenberg and Hermann Geiger. The Sisters of Notre-Dame de Sion number 500, of whom fifty are at the Ecce Homo and St. John’s, and seven at St. Peter’s. They are directed spiritually by the Priests of Notre-Dame de Sion, a congregation of secular priests, which includes lay brothers. At St. Peter’s in Jerusalem, there are six priests, nine lay brothers, and some scholastics. The German settlement of Tabgha, on the Lake of Genesareth, is in charge of a priest of Notre-Dame de Sion, assisted by a Lazarist. There is a foundation of Priests of Notre-Dame de Sion at Constantinople.
—BLANCHE M. KELLY.
III. INSTITUTE OF NOTRE-DAME DE NAMUR
… founded in 1803 at Amiens, France, by Bl. Julie Billiart (b. 1751; d. 1816) and Marie-Louise-Francoise Blin de Bourdon, Countess of Gezaincourt, in religion Mother St. Joseph (b. 1756; d. 1838). The formation of a religious congregation for the education of youth was the result of a formal order to Blessed Julie in the name of God by Pere Joseph Varin, S.J., who discerned her fitness for such an enterprise. Mlle Blin de Bourdon offered to defray the immediate expenses. At Amiens, August 5, 1803, they took a house in Rue Neuve, the cradle of the institute, with eight orphans, children confided to them by Pere Varin. In the chapel of this house, at Mass on February 2, 1803, the two foundresses and their postulant, Catherine Duchatel of Reims, made or renewed their vow of chastity, to which they added that of devoting themselves to the Christian education of girls, further proposing to train religious teachers who should go where-ever their services were asked for. Victoire Leleu (Sister Anastasie) and Justine Garcon (Sister St. John) joined the institute this year and with the foundresses, made their vows of religion October 15, 1804. The Fathers of the Faith who were giving missions in Amiens sent to the five sisters women and girls to be prepared for the sacraments. BI. Julie was successful and on the invitation of the missioners continued to assist them in the neighboring towns.
Returning to Amiens, the foundress devoted her-self to the formation of her little community. She taught the young sisters the ways of the spiritual life. To attain the double end of the institute, the foundress first secured teachers, among whom were Fathers Varin, Enfantin and Thomas, the last-named a former professor in the Sorbonne, and Mother St. Joseph Blin, to train the novices and sisters.
The first regular schools of the Sisters of Notre-Dame were opened in August, 1806. Pupils flocked into the class-rooms at once. The urgent need of Christian education among all classes of society in France at that time, led the foundresses to modify their original plan of teaching only the poor and to open schools for the children of the rich also. Simplicity, largeness of mind, and freedom from little feminine weaknesses, marked the training given to the higher classes. But the poorest and most forsaken were ever to remain the cherished portion of the institute, and the unwritten law that there may be in every mission free schools without pay schools, but not pay schools without free schools, still remains in force. Mother Julie did not require her postulants to bring a dowry, but a modest pension for the years of probation; a sound judgment, good health, aptitude for the work of the congregation, a fair education; these, with unblemished reputation, good morals, and an inclination to piety, were the qualifications she deemed indispensable. Within two years forty postulants were received.
The community lived under a provisional rule, based upon that of St. Ignatius, drawn up by Mother Julie and Father Varin, which was approved in 1805 by Msgr. Jean-Francois Demandolx, Bishop of Amiens. The necessary recognition was accorded on March 10, 1807. Though time and experience brought additions to those first constitutions, none of the fundamental articles have been changed: the sole exterior labor in the institute is the instruction of youth in schools in concert with the parochial clergy; a mother-house, a superior-general who appoints the local superiors, decides upon foundations and assigns their revenues, visits the secondary houses and moves subjects from one to another when necessary; one grade only of religious, no cloister, but no going out save for necessity, no visiting to relations, friends, or public buildings. It was for these points that the Blessed Foundress labored and suffered, as the substance of the constitutions, solemnly approved by Gregory XVI in 1844, shows.
The first branch house was established at St. Nicholas, near Ghent. At the departure of these five missionaries, December 15, 1806, the religious habit was assumed by the congregation, a private, religious ceremony, still unchanged. The taking of vows is also private, but takes place during Mass, St. Nicholas, as well as Mother Julie’s five other foundations in France, were all temporary. Later and permanent foundations were made in Belgium: Namur, 1807, which became the mother-house in 1809; Jumet, 1808; St. Hubert, 1809; Ghent, 1810; Zele, 1811; Gembloux and Andennes, 1813; Fleurus, 1814; and all arrangements for Liege and Dinant, though the communities took possession of these convents only after 1816.
Mother St. Joseph Blin de Bourdon, the co-foundress, was elected superior-general in succession to Blessed Mother Julie. During her generalate the institute passed through the most critical period of its existence, owing to the persecutions of religious orders by William of Orange-Nassau, King of the Netherlands. To compel them to remain in statu quo, to hold diplomas obtained only after rigid examinations in Dutch and French by state officials, to furnish almost endless accounts and writings regarding convents, schools, finances, and subjects, were some of the measures adopted to harass and destroy all teaching orders; but Mother St. Joseph‘s tact, clear-sightedness, and zeal for souls saved the institute. During his tour in 1829, King William visited the establishment at Namur and was so pleased that he created the mother-general a Dutch subject. The Revolution of 1830 and the assumption of the crown of Belgium by Leopold of Saxe-Gotha put an end to the petty persecutions of religious. Mother St. Joseph founded houses at Thuin, 1817; Namur Orphanage, 1823; Hospital St. Jacques, 1823; Verviers, 1827; Hospital d’Harscamp and Bastogne, 1836, the latter having been for the past thirty years a state normal school; Philippeville, 1837. The most important work of her generalate was the compiling and collating of the present Rules and Constitution of the Sisters of Notre Dame. She has left an explanation of the rule; the particular rule of each office; the Directory and Customs. She had preserved a faithful record of all that Mother Julie had said or written on these points; hence the will of the foundress is carried out in the smallest details of daily life, and the communities are alike everywhere. Moreover, she drew up the system of school management which has been followed ever since, with only such modification of curricula and discipline as time, place, and experience have rendered indispensable. This system of instruction is based upon that of St. John Baptist de La Salle, and may be read broadly in the “Management of Christian Schools,” issued by the Christian Brothers. The points of uniformity in the primary and secondary schools of all countries are chiefly: the emphasis laid upon thorough grounding in reading, writing, and arithmetic, grammar and composition, geography, and history; the half hour’s instruction daily in Christian doctrine; the half-hourly change of exercise; the use of the signal or wooden clapper in giving directions for movements in class; the constant presence of the teacher with her class whether in the class-room or recreation ground; the preparation of lessons at home, or at least out of class hours. Vocal and chart music, drawing and needlework are taught in all the schools. No masters from outside may give lessons to the pupils in any of the arts or sciences.
Mother St. Joseph was twice reelected superior-general, the term being at first fixed at ten years. To give greater stability to the government of the institute, a general chapter was convoked which should settle by ballot the question of life-tenure of the office of superior-general. The assembly unanimously voted in the affirmative. In 1819 a foundation was asked for Holland by Rev. F. Wolf, S.J., but, on account of political difficulties, Mother St. Joseph could not grant it. She offered, instead, to train aspirants to the religious life. Accordingly, two came to Namur, passed their probation, made their vows, and returned to labor in their own country. This is the origin of the congregation of Sisters of Notre Dame, whose mother-house is at Coesfield, and who have large schools in Cleveland, Covington, and other cities of the Middle West. Though not affiliated to Notre Dame of Namur, they follow the same rule and regard Blessed Mother Julie as their foundress.
Mother St. Joseph died on February 9, 1838, in the eighty-third year of her age and the twenty-third of her generalate. The preliminary process of her beatification is well advanced.
The third superior-general was Mother Ignatius (Therese-Josephine Goethals, b. 1800; d. 1842). Her services during the persecution under King William were invaluable. Excessive toil, however, told upon her later, and she died in the fourth year of her generalate; but not before she had sent the first colony of sisters to America.
She was succeeded by Mother Marie Therese, who, on account of ill-health, resigned her office the following year and Mother Constantine (Marie-Jeanne-Joseph-Collin, b. 1802, d. 1875) was elected. She ruled the institute for thirty-three years, her term of office being marked by the papal approbation of the Rule in 1844, the first mission to England in 1845, to California in 1851, to Guatemala in 1859. Under Mother Aloysie (Therese-Joseph Mainy, b. 1817, d. 1888), fifth superior-general, the processes for the canonization of Mother Julie and Mother St. Joseph were begun in 1881; twenty houses of the institute were established in Belgium, England, and America. Under her successor, Mother Aimee de Jesus (Elodie Dullaert, b. 1825, d. 1907), the Sisters of Notre Dame, at the request of Leopold II of Belgium, took charge of the girls’ schools in the Jesuit missions of the Congo Free State, where three houses were established. She also sent from England a community of eight sisters for the girls’ schools in the Jesuit mission of Zambesi, Mashonaland. An academy and free school were opened later at Kronstadt, Orange River Colony, South Africa. Mother Aimee de Jesus was created by the King of Belgium a Knight of the Order of Leopold, and Sister Ignatia was accorded a similar honor after fourteen years of labor in the Congo. During this generalate Mother Julie Billiart was solemnly beatified by Pius X, May 13, 1906. The present Superior-general, Mother Marie Aloysie, was elected in January, 1908.
The first foundation in America was made at Cincinnati, Ohio, at the request of the Right Reverend John B. Purcell, then Bishop and later the first Archbishop of Cincinnati. Sister Louise de Gonzague was appointed superior of the eight sisters who came here for this purpose. After firmly establishing the institute in America, failing health caused her recall to Namur, where she worked until her death in 1866. Upon Sister Louise, another of the original group, devolved in 1845 the charges of superiority not only of the house of Cincinnati, but also of the others then founded or to be founded east of the Rocky Mountains. Every year the sisters were asked for in some part of the country and the mother-house of Namur gave generously of subjects and funds until the convents in America were able to supply their own needs.
The two provincials who have followed Sister Louise continued the work along the lines she had traced out. Sister Julie (b. 1827, d. 1901) founded fifteen houses, including Trinity College, Washington, D.C., and a provincial house and novitiate at Cincinnati, Ohio. Sister Agnes Mary (b. 1840, d. 1910) made three foundations and built the first chapel dedicated to Blessed Mother Julie in America, a beautiful Gothic structure in stone, at Moylan, Pennsylvania.
In 1846 a colony of eight sisters left Namur under the care of Right Reverend F. N. Blanchet and Father de Smet, S.J., to labor among the Indians of the Oregon mission. Five years later these sisters, at the request of the Right Reverend J. S. Alemany, Bishop of San Francisco, were transferred to San Jose, California. The first establishment on the Pacific Coast was followed in course of time by ten others, which formed a separate province from Cincinnati. For thirty years it was under the wise care of Sister Marie Cornelie.
In 1851 two foundations were made in Guatemala, Central America, under government auspices and with such an outburst of welcome and esteem from the people as reads like a romance. In less than twenty years the reins of power having passed into the hands of the Liberals and Freemasons, the forty-one Sisters of Notre Dame were exiled.
There are three novitiates in America: at San Jose for the California Province, at Cincinnati for the central part of the United States, and at Waltham, Massachusetts, for the Eastern States. The rule has been kept in its integrity in America as in Europe. The union with Namur has been preserved, and a like union has even been maintained between all the houses of a province and its center, the residence of the provincial superior. According to the needs of the schools, the sisters pass from house to house, and even from province to province as obedience enjoins.
It was through the Redemptorists that the Sisters of Notre Dame first went to England. Father de Buggenoms, a Belgian, superior of a small mission at Falmouth, felt the urgent need of schools for the poor Catholic children. He asked and obtained from the Superior of the Sisters of Notre Dame at Namur a community of six sisters, and with these he opened a small school at Penryn in Cornwall. It continued only three years, however, as the place afforded no means of subsistence to a religious house. The Redemptorists having established a second English mission at Clapham, near London, and having asked again for Sisters of Notre Dame for a school, the community of Penryn was transferred thither in 1848. Through the initiative of Father Buggenoms the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, a community in the Diocese of Northampton, about fifty in number, were affiliated in 1852 to the Institute of Notre Dame, with the consent of the Bishops of Namur and Northampton. Scarcely had the hierarchy been reestablished in England when the Government offered education to the Catholic poor; the Sisters of Notre Dame devoted themselves earnestly to this work, under the guidance of Sister Mary of St. Francis (Hon. Laura M. Petre), who was to the congregation in England what Mother St. Joseph was to the whole institute. Before her death (June 24, 1886) eighteen houses had been founded in England. There are now twenty-one.
The most important of these English houses is the Training College for Catholic School-Mistresses at Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, the direction of which was confided to the Sisters of Notre Dame by the Government in 1856. The “center system” which admits of the concentrated instruction of pupil teachers, now adopted by all the School Boards of the larger English cities, originated with the sisters at Liverpool.
At the request of the Scotch Education Department, the Sisters of Notre Dame opened the Dowanhill Training College for Catholic School-Mistresses at Glasgow in 1895. Its history has been an unbroken record of academic successes and material expansion. A second convent in Scotland has been opened at Dumbarton this year (1910).
Although “codes” differ in terms and requirements, it may be said in general that in England and America the schools of Notre Dame are graded from kindergarten all through the elementary, grammar, and high school classes. The academies carry the schedule of studies on to college work, while Trinity College, Washington, D.C., and St. Mary’s Hall, Liverpool, are devoted exclusively to work for college degrees. To meet local difficulties and extend the benefit of Christian instruction, the sisters conduct industrial schools, orphanages for girls, schools for deaf mutes, and for negroes.
—A SISTER OF NOTRE DAME.
IV. SCHOOL SISTERS OF NOTRE DAME
… a religious community devoted to education. In 1910 they counted 3170 members in Europe and 3604 in America, a total of 6774, with about 115,300 pupils in America and 94,827 in Europe, a total of 210,127. In the United States they conduct parish schools in ten archdioceses and twenty-five dioceses, and have charge of eight orphanages; in addition they have parish schools and an orphanage in the Diocese of Hamilton, Canada; an Indian school at Harbor Springs, Mich.; a school for negroes at Annapolis; and a deaf-mute institute in Louisiana. Their principal boarding-schools are: Baltimore, Md.; Fort Lee, New Jersey; Quincy, Ill.; Longwood, Chicago; Prairie du Chien, Wis. Of their day and high schools the most prominent are at Baltimore, Md., Quincy, Ill.; Longwood and Chatawa, Miss.
The School Sisters of Notre Dame are a branch of the Congregation of Notre-Dame founded in France, by St. Peter Fourier in 1597. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, several convents of the congregation were established in Germany. The one at Ratisbon was suppressed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it was soon restored and remodeled to meet the needs of modern times. Bishop Wittmann of Ratisbon and Father Job of Vienna effected the change. While retaining the essential features of the rule and constitutions given by St. Peter Fourier, they widened the scope of the Sisters’ educational work. In 1834 their community consisted of one former pupil of the suppressed congregation, Caroline Gerhardinger, who became first Superior General (Mother Theresa of Jesus), and a few companions. The first convent was in Neunburg vorm Wald, Bavaria. In 1839 they removed to a suburb of Munich, and in 1843, into a former Poor Clare convent, built in 1284, and situated within the city limits. From this mother-house in the year 1847 six School Sisters of Notre Dame, on the invitation of Bishop O’Connor of Pittsburg, immigrated to America and landed at New York on July 31. One of the Sisters succumbed to the heat of the season and died at Harrisburg, Pa., on the journey from New York to St. Mary’s, Elk Co., Pa., destined to be the foundation-house in America. As St. Mary’s was not the place for a permanent location the mother-general successfully negotiated to obtain the Redemptorists‘ convent attached to St. James’ Church, Baltimore, Md. By November 3, 1847, three schools were opened. The second and last colony of sisters, eleven in number, arrived from Munich, March 25, 1848, and foundations were made at Pittsburg, Philadelphia, and Buffalo.
On December 15, 1850, the mother-house was transferred to Milwaukee with Mother Mary Caroline Friess as vicar-general of the sisters in America.
With money donated by King Louis I of Bavaria, a house was bought; this was absorbed later by Notre Dame Convent on St. Mary’s Hill. On January 2, 1851, St. Mary’s parish school was opened and St. Mary’s Institute for boarding and day pupils soon afterwards. On July 31, 1876, owing to its growth and extension, the congregation was divided into two provinces: the Western, with mother-house at Milwaukee; and the Eastern with mother-house at Baltimore. A second division of the Western province became necessary, and on March 19, 1895, the Southern province was formed, with its mother-house at St. Louis.
A. Government of the Congregation
—The Congregation of the School Sisters of Notre Dame is under the government of the mother-general at Munich; she and her four assistants form the generalate. In America the government is in the hands of the commissary-general and four assistants. The commissariate is elected for six years. All professed sisters of the teaching grade have a vote in this election. The congregation is divided into districts. The voting sisters in each district choose one chapter-sister. These chapter-sisters together with the provincials elect the commissary-general and assistants. The election is by secret ballot, and its results must be confirmed by the mother-general and the cardinal-protector. At the head of each province there is a mother provincial, elected with two assistants, by each province for three years. For the election of the mother-general and the general chapter, which meets every six years, a deputation of the sisters in America is sent to Munich, Bavaria. This deputation consists of the commissary-general and the mother provincial, ex officio, and a companion of each mother provincial elected by the respective province. In America a general congregation is convened every six years in the principal mother-house at Milwaukee.
B. Training of Members
—To train members for their future life the School Sisters have a candidature and a novitiate. The age for admission into the candidature is sixteen to twenty-seven. After two years’ probation and study, the candidate enters the novitiate, and two years later makes temporal vows for seven years; she then makes perpetual vows and becomes a professed sister. The teaching sisters meet at specified periods and at appointed houses of the order for summer schools and teachers’ institutes.
The principal houses of the congregation in the Western province are at Elm Grove, Waukesha Co., Wis., the home for aged, invalid, and convalescent sisters; at Prairie du Chien, Wis., founded in 1872, chartered in 1877, owing its origin to the generosity of Hon. John Lawler (died on February 24, 1891) and his son, Thomas C. Lawler, of Dubuque, Iowa; at Long-wood, Chicago, Ill., established and chartered in 1872. In 1903 the Legislature of Illinois granted the academy the right to add a college course and confer the degrees of A.B. and Ph.B. In the Eastern province at Baltimore, Md., chartered in 1864, charter amended and powers of corporation enlarged 1896. The sisters began their work in Baltimore in 1848; owing to the growth of their academy, more commodious quarters became necessary and the school, Notre Dame of Maryland, was transferred in 1873 to a magnificent estate of seventy acres obtained in the suburbs. To meet the continual demand for a more extensive curriculum for women, the sisters of the convent applied in January, 1896, to the State for the power of conferring academic degrees; this was granted by an Act of the Legislature, April 2, 1896, and the convent has now a college with courses leading to the baccalaureate, an academy that prepares students for the college, and a grammar and primary department. There is a convent at Fort Lee on the Palisades of the Hudson, Bergen County, N. J., where a residence was purchased by the sisters on October 2, 1879, the school being opened on November 21, 1879, and chartered in June, 1890. In the Southern province the principal schools are at Quincy, Ill., founded on December 28, 1859, as a parochial school, the academy opened in September, 1867; at Chatawa, Miss., founded on October 15, 1874, a deaf-mute institution; at Chincuba, La., founded by Canon Mignot, October 1, 1890, given in charge of the sisters September 25, 1892.
Most prominent among the sisters in America was Mother M. Caroline Friess, who died on July 22, 1892, after being superioress of the congregation for forty-two years. She was born near Paris, on August 24, 1824, and was called at baptism by the name of Josephine. As a child she was brought to Eichstadt, Bavaria, under the tutelage of her uncle, Msgr. Michael Friess. Even when only a novice she was given charge of very important schools in Munich. She was one of the first to volunteer for the missionary work in the New World, and immigrated to America in 1847. It soon became evident that it was Sister Caroline who was to develop the young congregation. She was appointed vicar of the mother-general in America and later on elected as the first commissary-general. Under her direction from four members in 1847, the sisterhood grew to two thousand in 1892. Her life was written by Msgr. P. M. Abbelen. Mother M. Clara Heuck was the third commissary-general. When the Eastern province was established in 1876 Sister M. Clara was appointed as novice-mistress. Soon she became the superioress in Baltimore and the second mother provincial in the East, which position she held for three terms, after which she was elected commissary-general at Milwaukee on May 13, 1899. She died at Milwaukee on August 4, 1905, aged sixty-two.
SR. MARY JOSEPHINE.
V. SISTERS OF NOTRE DAME (of Cleveland, Ohio)
… a branch of the congregation founded by Blessed Julie Billiart. In 1850, Father Elting of Coesfeld, Germany, aided by the Misses Hildegonda Wollbring and Lisette Kuehling, who became the first members of this community, introduced the Order of Notre Dame into Westphalia. The novices were trained by three sisters from the community of Amersfoort, Holland. Soon they were enabled to open a normal school and to take charge of parish schools. The Prussian Government objecting to teachers dependent on foreign authority, the sisters were compelled to sever their relations with the mother-house in Holland and to erect their own at Coesfeld. When in 1871, the Kulturkampf broke out in Germany, the Sisters of Coesfeld, though they had repeatedly received at the Prussian state examinations, the highest testimonials as most efficient teachers, were at once expelled. Thereupon, Father Westerholt, of St. Peter’s Church, Cleveland, had Bishop Gilmour invite them to his diocese. On July 5, 1874, the superioress-general accompanied by eight sisters arrived in New York, and the following day in Cleveland. Their first home was a small frame house near St. Peter’s Church. Two months later they took charge of the parish school for girls. Presently Bishop Toebbe of Covington, Ky., invited them to his diocese, where they were first employed as teachers of the Mother of God schools in Covington. In the autumn of 1874, the sisters began to conduct the parish schools of St. Stephen’s, Cleveland, and of St. Joseph‘s, Fremont. Within four years of their first arrival on the North American continent, two hundred sisters had been transferred to the missions in Ohio and Kentucky. The center of the community was temporarily at Covington, where in 1875 a convent with an academy was erected. The same year the superioress-general came to Cleveland, where the mother-house was built and an academy founded in 1878. In 1883 a girls’ boarding-school on Woodland Hills was opened. An academy was founded in Toledo, Ohio, and opened September, 1904. Since 1877 the Sisters of Notre Dame have been in charge of two orphanages, one at Cold Springs, Ky., and the other at Bond Hill in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. In May, 1887, the Prussian Government allowed the sisters to return and their mother-house was established at Mahlhausen, Rhenish Prussia. The American branch is under the immediate direction of a provincial superioress, residing in Cleveland, and numbers 430 sisters. The sisters conduct also upwards of forty parish schools, mostly in Ohio and Kentucky, containing about 14,000 pupils.
NICHOLAS PFEIL