The Iowa Territory
In 1843, Bishop Matthias Loras of the Diocese of Dubuque, Iowa, who had been visiting Philadelphia, invited the sisters to come teach in the Iowa Territory. So the pioneer BVMs, by then nineteen in number, moved to Dubuque, Iowa. They opened a new boarding school, St. Mary’s Female Academy, which was the predecessor of the St. Raphael Cathedral school. They were the first women religious in the Territory and would soon open many additional schools.
The first years of prairie life proved to be difficult: there continued to be disagreements between the differing immigrant communities, especially the German, Irish, and French. This fact, along with the need for more space—the community and school continued to grow—led the sisters to decide to move to a new location outside the city proper. In 1846 the community established its first motherhouse eight miles southwest of Dubuque on land they called St. Joseph's Prairie. The campus included a convent, a chapel, a house for Fr. Donaghoe, farmland, and a boarding school named St. Joseph Academy, a complement to St. Mary's which continued to thrive in town.
An 1849 fire destroyed the convent, school, and chapel. Resilient, the community immediately decided to rebuild. In 1855, to respond to another need of the time, the sisters opened a hospital on 14th Street in Dubuque. This was a short-lived venture and the building was subsequently used for another school, Sacred Heart. In 1859, the building again saw new life when the St. Joseph Prairie boarding school moved to the site. During these early years, the number of towns at which there were schools continued to grow. An especially important era of growth began in 1867 when Jesuit Priest Arnold Damen invited the sisters to open a school at Holy Family in Chicago. The Sisters of Charity, BVM opened a number of schools throughout the city, including St. Mary’s and Immaculata High Schools.
Read more about this topic: Sisters Of Charity Of The Blessed Virgin Mary
Famous quotes containing the words iowa and/or territory:
“When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn’t come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards, Des Moines is a mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.”
—Bill Bryson (b. 1951)
“A Country is not a mere territory; the particular territory is only its foundation. The Country is the idea which rises upon that foundation; it is the sentiment of love, the sense of fellowship which binds together all the sons of that territory.”
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)