St Margarets Academy - Dayseye Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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the gruesome prison of Saint Didicr. Seven won the crown of martyrdom on the guillotine. After eleven long months of suffering and anguish the Reign of Terror spent its force. Mother Saint John and her companions were liberated to continue their noble work and slowly but steadily repaired the ruin wrought by an irreligious government. The heroic Sister St. John Fontbonne gathered together the scattered flock, lifted again the cross, invoked the protection of St. Joseph, and built anew for France and for the Faith.” To the spiritual heritage left by the Sisters of France, the pioneer Sisters of America added their own invincible courage and undaunted zeal. After forty-nine days on the ocean, they landed at gay New Orleans, journeyed up the river to St. Louis, and began their mission in the Hospital of the Sisters of Charity. Though Carondelet was destined to be the future home of the order in America, the first settlement was established in Cahokia and there the Sisters were treated to their first meal of American cornbrcad. As the annual overflow of the turbulent Mississippi rendered the place unhealthful, the Sisters were obliged to abandon their settlement and move to Carondelet. The first school started with an enrollment of thirty pupils, who paid tuition in the form of wood or provisions. At this time Bishop Rosati required more assistance and appealed to Lyons for Sisters to teach the deaf. Two Sisters were sent but were delayed on the way. Finally, after a tedious journey, they reached St. Louis in September and started the school for the deaf mutes and orphans. As their rough, weather-beaten convent, housing six Sisters, four mutes, and six orphans, soon proved inadequate, a new convent was erected under the guidance of Mother Celcstine, a cheery and lovable person. Rapidly the order flourished and spread throughout the land. As years passed, its convent walls sheltered eager students from snow-sheathed New England to the sun bathed slopes of the rocky coast; from the rolling prairies of the myriad-laked Minnesota and the grain-flecked Dakotas to the balmy South. The order is now widespread and harvesting fruitful returns in twenty-four dioceses throughout the country. Cha e! in the Mother Home of the Sifters of St. Joseph in Lyons. Mother Home of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Carondelet, Missouri

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Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet One century ago a clarion call crossed the crest-tipped Atlantic and sounded its note at the convent doors of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Lyons. Bishop Rosati of St. Louis needed missionary Sisters in his diocese in America. The Sisters of St. Joseph were summoned and responded with eager and enthusiastic hearts. On January seventeenth. 1836, the first little mission band watched the shores of sunny France vanish in the distance and turned hopeful, trusting faces toward America. The Sisters brought with them from France traditions rich in valiant courage, in deep devotion, and in loyalty to duty. The pioneer Sisters of France had known want, hardship, and the terrors of war. Nearly two hundred years before, a small group of eager, ardent young women, in answer to the urgent call of Bishop de Maupas, assembled in the home of Madame de Joux, in Lc Puy for their novitiate training before making vows. On October fifteenth, 1650, in a dimly lighted chapel these young girls consecrated their lives to the service of God as the first Sisters of St. Joseph. On that occasion Bishop de Maupas, handing to the daughters of France a cross said, ''Wear it openly; bear it bravely just as Christ did up anguished heights. Carry it down the ways of pain, into homes of fever, into the warrens of the poor; bear it to far lands. Let it be your oriflame to light you to victory. Mother St. John I-ontuonni .Superior-Genera! of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Lyons, France The cross given the first Sisters of St. Joseph has been their consolation. They wore it openly; they bore it bravely. The little order grew rapidly in its infant years, and by 1778, it had established a firm foothold in many parts of France. It was then that the French Revolution broke out, spreading devastating havoc over the country. At the outbreak of this terrible siege. Mother Saint John Fontbonne, a native of Bas, was appointed Superior of the Sisters in Monistrol. Gracious, capable, and courageous, Sister Fontbonne made an impressive figure as Mother of the order. Straight and firmly did she steer her little clientele, even when the ravages of the Revolution stalked through their ranks cruelly driving them from the convent, forcing them to take refuge at the Fontbonne home in Bas. After two years of clandestine labor the Sisters were discovered by their persecutors and thrust into Mother House of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Lyons

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St. Jottph't Provmtidldtf St. Pdul. Minn. Province of St. Paul As a steamer plied up the Mississippi 'mid floating ice and landed at St. Paul on November third, 1851, it brought to Minnesota its first Sisters—four Sisters of St. Joseph—whom Mother Cclestinc had sent at the request of Bishop Cretin. The following day, the Sisters were at home” in their first Minnesota convent, a low-framed, two-roomed shanty. The vestry of the log church was soon converted into the first Catholic school room in Minnesota, the embryo of St. Joseph’s Academy. The arrival of two boarders necessitated a one-room addition to the tiny convent. Winter brought with it suffering and hardship. The convent with its paper-chinked walls was none too warm, and the furniture was meager and crude. Colorful blankets of the Indians occasionally seen in the streets were reminders that scalping days were still a dread of the pioneers in Minnesota. Despite the rigors of the first winter, spring brought the roll of boarders to eight and the day pupils filled the vestry as well as the church. Thus the school grew, a second building became necessary, and St. Paul’s first Cathedral became the Sister’s chapel. From these humble beginnings, prosperous institutions grew. Instruction of the Indians was started at Long Prairie and thus fulfilled one of the primary objects of the Sisters’ missionary endeavors in the United States. Some years later two nuns were sent from St. Louis to establish under the title of the Immaculate Conception the first Catholic school in St. Paul’s twin city, Minneapolis. In the year following, three Sisters supervised the district school at Mcndota, occupying the Sibley House, the old home of Minnesota’s first governor. The years that followed pioneer days marked the founding of schools, both for grades and high schools throughout the northern province; they saw the erection of St. Joseph’s Hospital, St. Joseph’s Academy, and the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul; of St. Mary’s Hospital, St. Anthony’s Convent, St. Margaret’s Academy, and the lovely new Academy of Holy Angels in Minneapolis besides parochial schools in charge of the Sisters of St. Joseph. The growing enrollment of Sisters in the order necessitated a new novitiate which was built in St. Paul about thirty years ago. A splendid Provincial House was erected on the adjoining site in later years. Mother Seraphine Ireland was a connecting link, it might seem, between St. Louis and St. Paul. It was in 1860 that Sister Seraphine made her vows and became a Sister of St. Joseph. Soon after her profession she was summoned to St. Joseph’s Academy in Carondclct where she taught until 1868. In that year she X Pane EUvtn