The Catholic Schools: the Founding Generation

1849 – 1926

The Holy Cross planting: Catholic schooling in South Bend was planted from Notre Dame, four miles north, by the three branches of Holy Cross — priests, brothers and sisters — whom Father Edward Sorin led. The brothers' extracts preserved in the Notre Dame archives show the intention early: in 1849 Sorin directed that Brother Gatian be sent into South Bend "as soon as possible to begin there a regular school, at least a French class." On 14 September 1852 Sorin bought lots 124, 125 and 126 in the little town of Lowell, across the river, from Samuel and Catherine Cottrell for $250, the deed itself providing that the property be used "for the benefit of the Catholic School of St. Joseph's County." Lowell was afterward absorbed by South Bend, and the lots stood at what is now Hill and LaSalle streets.

St. Joseph's, 1853–1854: On that ground Sorin established St. Joseph Parish — first called St. Alexis Chapel, a mission of Notre Dame — and the first little building, raised in 1853, was chapel and school in one. By the next year the Sisters of the Holy Cross were teaching "girls and little boys" in it. That school is Saint Joseph Grade School, and it has never closed: the diocese names it the oldest continuously operating school in the city, Catholic or otherwise. It grew through an Assumption Academy for boarding and day students, replaced in 1886 by a larger two-story building, into the present school built in 1926 — the building whose centenary the school celebrated in September 2026. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999; the school, staffed now entirely by lay teachers under Holy Cross administration, was named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2011 and again in 2019.

The brothers' boys, and the parish schools: The boys' side ran on a parallel line. In 1862 a frame building eighteen by twenty-six feet was raised at the corner of South Bend and Notre Dame avenues for the larger boys, taught by Brothers Raymond, Daniel, Romuald and Philip. St. Patrick's parish opened a separate school for boys in 1865, in a wing of the old church, under the Rev. P. O. Cooney; the Rev. D. J. Spillane built it a new frame schoolhouse in 1872 for $1,600. St. Hedwig's, the Polish parish, kept its school with secular teachers until 1882, when the brothers took charge under Brother Stanislaus; in 1884 the parish raised a brick schoolhouse then the largest in the city, and by 1895 it held 860 pupils, taught by brothers and sisters together. The German parish, St. Mary of the Assumption, founded in 1882, opened its school in January 1884 in the sacristy with twenty-seven children, had a frame schoolhouse ready by November of that year, added a second story in 1891 for some 240 children, and was taught by the Sisters of the Holy Cross from the beginning. The pattern held across the city: as each national parish rose — Irish, Polish, German, Hungarian — a school rose beside its church, staffed by the orders, and the Diocese of Fort Wayne, erected in 1857 and today the Diocese of Fort Wayne–South Bend, stood over the whole.

Sources:

1. Brother Aidan's Extracts (No. 522), University of Notre Dame Archives — the 1849 direction to Brother Gatian, the 1852 Lowell purchase, the 1862 boys' building and its four brother-teachers, St. Patrick's school of 1865 and 1872, and St. Hedwig's school to 1895, drawing on Blanchard's History of Catholicity in Indiana (1898) and Howard's History of St. Joseph County.
2. An Illustrated History of St. Joseph's Church, South Bend, Indiana (1901), read in the Internet Archive copy — the deed of 14 September 1852 and its school clause.
3. Saint Joseph Parish, its own history — the chapel-school of 1853, the Sisters teaching by 1854, Assumption Academy and the building of 1886, and the present school of 1926.
4. Diocese of Fort Wayne–South Bend, September 2026 — Saint Joseph Grade School's centenary in its present building, its standing as the city's oldest continuously operating school, its founding in 1854, the National Register listing of 1999 and the Blue Ribbon awards of 2011 and 2019.
5. St. Mary of the Assumption parish history, as carried in the St. Joseph County parish records — the parish founded 1882 and the school's course from the sacristy of January 1884.