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 sisters of one congregation. The first candidates received the habit on 29 September 1841. Three congregations of women religious descend from that gathering today: the Marianites of Holy Cross in Louisiana, the Sisters of Holy Cross at Montreal, and the Sisters of the Holy Cross of Notre Dame, Indiana — the branch this record follows.

Four sisters from Le Mans. When Father Edward Sorin, who had planted the priests and brothers of Holy Cross at Notre Dame in 1842, asked Moreau for sisters, four were sent: Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart, Sister Mary of Bethlehem, Sister Mary of Nazareth, and Sister Mary of Calvary. They crossed with Father Cointet. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives their departure from France as 6 June 1843; the college catalog's history says that after a voyage of forty days they arrived on 30 May 1843. The two dates as printed do not reconcile — a party cannot arrive a week before it sails, and a forty-day crossing fits either a late-spring sailing or a July arrival — and the record carries them unreconciled; the arrival stands in the summer of 1843.

Refused in Indiana, received in Michigan. The sisters were meant for the work at Notre Dame, and the college president's 2021 account of the record has them arrive in July 1843 and move into the attic of the log chapel on the Notre Dame ground, doing the community's domestic work — sacristy, infirmary, and clothes room — while their standing was disputed. Indiana's bishop, de la Hailandière of Vincennes, told them in substance that the state had women religious enough. The sisters withdrew on that refusal to Bertrand, Michigan, on the St. Joseph River above South Bend, where Bishop Lefevre of Detroit sanctioned the foundation. The congregation's own annals record that Lefevre at one point withdrew his permission under protest from Vincennes, and that after a conference with Sorin he withdrew the prohibition, renewed the permission, and gave the little community his benediction. Saint Mary's Academy — the congregation's first American school — opened at Bertrand on 16 July 1844.

Sources

1. Sisters of the Holy Cross, "History," the congregation's published account (cscsisters.org).
2. Catholic Encyclopedia, "Sisters of the Holy Cross" (1913), the four sisters and the 6 June 1843 departure.
3. Saint Mary's College Catalog 2024–25, General Information — the forty-day voyage and the 30 May 1843 arrival, as printed.
4. Saint Mary's College, "Address from President Katie Conboy" (2021) — the July 1843 arrival and the log chapel attic, at the strength this history already carries.
5. A Story of Fifty Years: From the Annals of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, 1855–1905 (Ave Maria, 1905), "The Community in the New World" — Bishop Lefevre's withdrawal and restoration of permission.