The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Saint Mary's and the Sisters of the Holy Cross
Across the St. Joseph River from the university, on a wooded bluff a mile and a quarter west of Notre Dame, stands the other half of the bend's founding story: the motherhouse of the Sisters of the Holy Cross and Saint Mary's College. Saint Mary's stands in the unincorporated Notre Dame census-designated place, as the university does; South Bend's city limits run south of the grounds, and the college's story is told here because the bend's history cannot be told without it — the sisters taught the city's children, nursed its soldiers' generation, and hold its oldest school ground. The question this record answers first is the plain one: whose land is it? The record's answer, documented below, is that Father Sorin bought the ground in 1855 for eight thousand dollars, and that the sisters hold it still — the college's own catalog states that its 140 acres of campus lie within 278 acres owned by the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross.
The Coming of the Sisters, 1843–1844
1841–1844
Le Mans, 1841. The congregation traces to the Reverend Basil Anthony Moreau of Le Mans, who in 1841 gathered the first sisters of Holy Cross in France as the women's branch of the family he had founded — priests, brothers, and…
Bertrand: The First Motherhouse, 1844–1855
1844–1855
A rented five-room house. The congregation's annals describe the first home exactly: a small frame building of five rooms — living room, classroom, and kitchen-refectory below, dormitory and novitiate community room above …
The Move and the Land, 1855
1855 — and the holding today
The Rush property, bought for eight thousand dollars. The congregation's annals give the transaction in one sentence: a tract of land west of Notre Dame, along the St. Joseph River, known as the Rush property, had been resolutely…
Mother Angela Gillespie, the Virtual Foundress
1824–1887
Eliza Gillespie of Brownsville. She was born Eliza Maria Gillespie in 1824 at Brownsville, Pennsylvania. On 17 April 1853, at Bertrand, she received the habit from Father Sorin as Sister Mary of St. Angela. The congregation sent…
The Congregation's Own Course: Separation, Autonomy, Approbation
1857–1896, and the line of superiors
Three branches of one family. The Holy Cross that planted itself at the bend in 1841–43 was one congregation of priests, brothers, and sisters under Moreau. It did not stay one body. In 1857 the sisters separated from the priests…
The Civil War: The Sisters Go to the Hospitals
1861–1867
The governor's request. On 21 October 1861 Governor Oliver P. Morton of Indiana addressed a request to Father Sorin for sisters to nurse the Union wounded. The next day Mother Angela and six other sisters departed for Cairo…
Saint Mary's College, Whole
1855–2026
Chartered first. The school that moved to the Rush property in 1855 was Saint Mary's Academy, and the state met it the same year: chartered by Indiana in 1855, it stands in the college's chronology of important dates as the first…
The Graduate School of Sacred Theology, 1943
1943–1970
The first, for women. In 1943 Sister Madeleva founded at Saint Mary's the Graduate School of Sacred Theology — the nation's first graduate theology program for women, in the congregation's own summary of it — at a time when the…
The Merger That Was Signed and Unmade, 1971
1965–1972
Co-exchange first. Saint Mary's and Notre Dame had been drawing together for years before anyone said the word merger. A co-exchange program began in 1965 with some 200 students crossing the road to each other's classes; by 1971…
Nursing: The Wartime Line Runs Through the College
1861–2026
From the wards to the classroom. The college's own history of its nursing programs begins, correctly, in 1861 — with Mother Angela and the six sisters who went to Cairo with no training at all. The congregation's hospitals made…
The Big Old Sanctuary: The Church of Our Lady of Loretto
1856–2026
Two Loretto structures, kept distinct. The sanctuary on the bluff is in fact two buildings of one dedication, and the record keeps them separate. The first is the Chapel of Loretto — the Little Chapel of Loretto, the Holy House…
The Motherhouse Buildings
1860–2026
Bertrand Hall, and its three costs. The motherhouse rose in stories. Bertrand Hall, built 1860–62, was the entire school in one five-story building of Notre Dame brick, designed by William Thomas of Chicago and built under…
The Sisters' South Bend Schools
1853–1976, and the succession
The pattern, stated once. For a century the classrooms of Catholic South Bend ran on the three branches of the one congregation planted at Notre Dame in 1841–43 — the priests over the parishes, the brothers over the boys, the…
The Broader Family
1844–2026
Holy Cross College, the brothers' college. The brothers of Holy Cross opened their own college on the Notre Dame ground in 1966 — a two-year college founded for the order's own members, grown since into a four-year liberal arts…
The National Register Test
The test, run November 2026
Negative — and the traps named. No National Register of Historic Places listing for the Saint Mary's College campus at Notre Dame appears in the record, and the negative prints whole, because the register's Saint Marys are a…
The Ground Today
Verified November 2026
The bluff as it stands. The motherhouse ground in November 2026 holds everything this record has followed onto it. The Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross is headquartered there, under Sister Sharlet Ann Wagner's…
Saint Mary's College — at Its Civic Position
1844 – present
The position, stated plainly: Saint Mary's College is not in South Bend. It stands in the unincorporated Notre Dame CDP, west of the University of Notre Dame, and carries the mailing address Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 — the same…
Saint Mary's College: three record gifts in fifteen years
2011–2026
The Mathile gift: On 26 March 2011 Saint Mary's College announced the largest single private gift in its 167-year history: 9 million dollars from MaryAnn and Clayton Mathile — founders of the Mathile Institute for the Advancement…
Bertrand at Depth: A Mission School on Potawatomi Ground
1843–1855
Le Mans to the St. Joseph River: The American founding did not begin at Bertrand. It began in a women's community gathered at Le Mans in 1841 as one branch of a single Holy Cross family of priests, brothers and sisters, and it…
Sister Madeleva Wolff: The President Who Rebuilt the Idea of the College
1887–1964; presidency 1934–1961
A student who became the institution: She entered the Sisters of the Holy Cross in 1908, took the name Madeleva, finished her bachelor's degree in 1909, and then built an education that was, for a woman religious of her…
The Presidential Course, Whole: From Directress to the Fourteenth President
1855–2026
Before there were presidents: The numbered presidency begins only in 1908; the half-century before it belongs to a different title. The base tells Mother Angela Gillespie's directress years whole, and this article points there…
The Works Web: Schools, Hospitals and Missions Beyond the Bluff
1844–2026
Saint Mary's place in the web, stated exact: Saint Mary's College is one work among hundreds in the record of a single congregation, and getting its place exact is the point of this article. The congregation — the Sisters of the…
The Buildings' Courses: Stone, Fire Risk and Second Lives
1903–2026
How to read this campus: The base tells the motherhouse buildings — Bertrand Hall and its annex and Lourdes Hall, the Tower Building, the convent of 1954, the cemetery — from the congregation's side. This article tells the…
Student Life Across the Eras: Academy Girls, College Women, Belles
1844–2026
The academy girl: The first Saint Mary's students were not college women. They were boarders — sixty of them in the moving party of 1855 — taught alongside day pupils and orphans in a single building that was dormitory…
The Modern Course: Lay Governance, Graduate Return and the Conboy Decade
2000–November 2026
The century turns on money and mission: The modern course opens with the Eldred presidency's signature transaction: a twelve-million-dollar Lilly Endowment grant in 2000, in the fact book's chronology, supporting the Center for…