St Marys Academy - Blue Star Yearbook (Austin, TX)

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HISTORY OF SAINT MARY’S ACADEMY, AUSTIN, TEXAS The citizens of Austin, Texas barely had begun to carve new lives for themselves from the chaos following the Civil War when a call for Holy Cross recruits was sounded in their city. Mother M. Angela and Sister M. Raymond, in company with Father Sorin, arrived in Austin in March of 1872, only seven years after Lee’s surrender at Appommatox. Austin was then nothing more than a village whose ad- vantages were natural ones: the river, the hills, the valley. Mother Angela had come to this rough Texas town in answer to a plea from Father Nicholas Feltin, the pastor of Saint Mary’s Church. He wanted the Sisters of the Holy Cross to take over the administration of his parish school. Wisely, Mother Angela had accepted his offer, and thus were begun the labors of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in the capital of Texas. Because the sisters appointed to the new mission were late in arriving at Austin, Mother Angela and Sister M. Austin at first did all the work of teaching and cooking. The school, situated on the siteofwhat is now the sacristy of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, was nothing but a cabin consisting of two poorly furnished rooms. These rooms the sisters used as convent, dormitory, kitchen, classroom, parlor, and recreation hall. The beginnings of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in Austin were almost parallel to those of the Congregation during its early days of poverty and hardship in Bertrand, Michigan. By June, however, eighty pupils had enrolled at Saint Mary's School despite its lack of conveniences. At the close of the school year Mother Angela, satisfied with the progress of the new mission, returned to Indiana leaving Sister M. Mildred in charge as superior. During the next few years Saint Mary's acquired such a reputation for Christian education that its prestige increased as rapidly as its annual enrollment. By 1875 it became necessary to purchase a plot of ground ad- joining the school. On this site a new stone building was erected to provide both the sisters and the students with more commodious quarters. Although Saint Mary's Academy had already expanded twice since its founding, in 1882 it was deemed expedient for the sisters to find even more spacious grounds

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In this building the Sisters of the Holy Cross spent their first years in Austin, Texas. 11 was to th e rude cabin in the rear of the building that Mother M. Angela and Sister M. Raymond came in March of 1872.

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SaintMary’s Academy, 206 East Seventh Street, was the second build- ing occupied by the Sister s of the Holy Cross in Austin, Texas. From this building were graduated most of the academy’s present alumnae.