Mount St Mary Academy - Mercian Yearbook (Little Rock, AR)

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1851-1951-ONE HUNDRED ST. MAR Y'S, 1851 One hundred years of devotion and sac- rifice! One hundred years of dedication to God! One hundred years of progress for St. Mary's! So reads the record of the Sisters of Mercy in Arkansas. It was in 1850 that the recently consecrated Andrew J. Byrne, first Bishop of the Little Rock Diocese, recognized the great need for Religious to spread the word of God to the poor, the sick, and the ignorant of his territory. Believing that the recently founded Order of the Sisters of Mercy, begun in 1831 by Mother Catherine McAuley, would best fit the needs of the hard and trying voyage across the Atlantic. They spent the time on board teaching the children, visit- ing the sick, instructing the older people, and saying their prayers in the small chapel erected for them in a stateroom. During the journey, the ship was once lost in a storm and then for some time was becalmed at sea, but through the fer- vent and constant prayers of the Sisters, all on board remained safe. After the crossing, the ship sailed in- to the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississip- pi, landing at New Orleans, where the Sis- ters rested and visited for several days with the Ursuline nuns. The Bishop and the Sisters then boarded the steamer Pontiac and sailed up the Mississippi, into the Arkansas River, and arrived at the Little Rock wharf February 5, 1851. During the absence of the Bishop, the Vicar-General, who had been appointed to build the Sisters' convent, had died, and there was no home ready for them when they arrived. The Bishop turned over to them his home on Second and Center Streets and soon purchased for them a school, a former meetinghouse located at religion starved people of Arkansas, Bishop Byrne went to the Motherhouse of the Order in Dublin, Ire- land. From there he was directed to the branch house in Naas, where he delivered his fervent and eloquent plea. He found the Sisters willing and ea- ger to answer his call, and at last it was decided that four professed Sisters and eight postulants would make up the little band to sail November 30 on the John O'Toole. The Sisters, unaccus- tomed to sea travel, had a ST. MARY'S, 1885