Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School - History

History

The Visitation Convent, Georgetown was founded at the request of Archbishop Leonard Neale, president of Georgetown College, with Teresa Lalor. The Visitation order is Salesian, basing its spirituality on the teachings of Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Jane Frances de Chantal. One of St. Francis’s central teachings is, “Be who you are and be that well.” A second teaching still imparted to the students of Visitation is, “Nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing so gentle as real strength.” While the Sisters of the Visitation no longer teach the majority of classes at the school, they maintain an active presence in daily life there by teaching homeroom, participating in school events, and reaching out to students and their families.

The convent and school at Georgetown Visitation have been active participants in the history of Washington, DC. When it was still illegal to teach a slave to read, the Sisters of the Visitation opened a Saturday school where they would offer a free education to any young girl who wished to learn. Both free blacks and slaves learned at the Visitation convent. During the War of 1812, the Visitation campus was used as a hospital for soldiers wounded when the British set fire to the city of Washington. The walls and corridors of Founders Hall display the family heirlooms and portraits that were given to the school in lieu of tuition payment during the hard economic times of the American Civil War, World War I and World War II.