Sacred Heart College - Gradatim Yearbook (Belmont, NC)

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Very Rev. Father Felix hintemever. o.s.b.. v.g. Ecclesiastical Superior 1892-102-4 HISTORY Jubilee Year of Sacred Heart Convent and Academy, we salute you! Glorious Golden Year that touches with radiant hue the foundation of our beloved Academy, we greet you! Joyfully, jubilantly, proudly we address our Alma Mater and eagerly request that she tell to us. the graduates of this, her Golden Jubilee Year, something of her glorious past, her joys and sorrows, her strivings and triumphs, through all those happy, fruitful years. Gathered closely around her, we listen attentively the while she gives us this story that has been fifty years in the making, this story whose principal characters are the revered past and the esteemed present teachers of our beloved Alma Mater. It is a story of self-sacrifice, of constant spending of the energies of life that others might tread the higher paths. It is a story of benevolence, sympathy, and zeal. It is a story punctuated by manifold hardships and even impending threats of failure. It is a story of the boundless charity of the Sisters of Mercy of Belmont, North Carolina. My dear Graduates of our Golden Jubilee Year, almost every beginning is replete with obstacles and discouragements, doubly so if the instruments are meager and the natural forces, material and personal, inadequate. Such, in truth, was the beginning of the Community of the Sisters of Mercy who

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Rt. Rev. Vincent George Taylor. O.S.B.. D.D. Present Abbot -Ordinary 1925-

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attempted to establish themselves in several different locations in North Caro- lina before they made their permanent foundation of Motherhouse and Academy in Belmont. In 1869. in answer to an appeal from the newly appointed Bishop James Gibbons to the newly created Vicariate of North Carolina, three Sisters of Mercy from the infant foundation in Charleston. South Carolina, came to Wilmington. North Carolina, to undertake the conducting of a Catholic school in that city. The Sisters of Mercy of Charleston were not strangers to the people of Wilmington, for a few years previously they had braved sickness and possible death when they came to Wilmington to nurse the victims of yellow fever which then ravaged that city. Bishop Gibbons ' appeal for Sisters for his school was answered in the persons of Sister Mary Augustine Kent, Sister Mary Charles Curtin. and Sister Mary Baptist Sheehan who came to Wilmington on October 11. 1869. These three Sisters were the founders of a new institute destined to take root in this State. They were the pioneers of Catholic learning in North Carolina. They formed the nucleus of the Sisters of Mercy of Belmont. Between the arrival of the Sisters in Wilmington and their coming to Belmont, there elapsed several years before the occurrence of that providential event which led to their permanent establishment at Sacred Heart. In 1891. Bishop Haid, first Abbot of Belmont Abbey, wrote to Mother Augustine in Wilmington bringing her the news that he had been informed of the sale of a piece of property between the Monastery and the town of Belmont. The Bishop had desired for some time to have a religious Community of women to conduct a school for girls near the Abbey. The zealous Sisters were eager to work in unison with the Bishop ' s desire, and though unable then to finance the purchase, they complied with the wishes of Bishop Haid and accepted the offer. Encouraging letters about the proposed purchase were received from the Prior of Belmont Abbey. Father Felix, who then and in the years that followed, showed a kindly, fatherly solicitude for the welfare of the Sisters and in all that concerned them. Negotiations were completed, the property was purchased, and immediately plans for a school building began to materialize. On February 3. 1892. the first peg of the Belmont house was driven into the ground. On September 1, at 4:30 in the afternoon, Sister M. Catherine, as Superior, Sister M. Cecilia. Sister M. Agatha. Sister M. Xavier. and Sister M. Clare arrived in Belmont to begin this new foundation. Interesting, amusing, and inspiring are the events chronicled by the Community Annalist of those first days at Sacred Heart. The house was not quite finished when the Sisters arrived. Not at all comforting was the realiza- tion that their first night was to be spent in a house without doors, out in the woods, and in utter darkness: Sister Catherine had forgotten her candles and matches. For the dedication on September 8, Sisters and workmen vied with one another in their efforts to be ready for the big day. When at last the day arrived, the whole house was cleared of all evidences of preparations,