St. Joseph’s Academy — the Hub of the Sisters’ Web

Documented from 1867 — conducted by the Sisters of the Holy Cross at 303 South Taylor Street — last class 1953, absorbed into Saint Joseph High School

What the Academy was: St. Joseph’s Academy was the Sisters of the Holy Cross’s girls’ academy in South Bend, and for the better part of a century it was also the residence and staging point from which the sisters staffed the city’s parish schools. The Notre Dame Archives’ Extracts of Brother Aidan carry a council entry of March 26, 1867 allowing Brother Peter of Alcantara “for the Academy of St. Joseph, South Bend” — the Academy standing in the Holy Cross record by that year. Its place in the web is stated plainly by the parish records around it. Blanchard’s 1898 account of St. Patrick’s school records that it “is taught by two Brothers and two Sisters of Holy Cross from St. Joseph’s Academy, and two lay teachers,” with the girls, 130 in number, taught in the Academy itself. Alerding’s 1907 diocesan history records of St. Hedwig’s school that its eight Sisters of the Holy Cross “reside in St. Joseph’s Academy, one block away.” The Academy was thus not one school among many; it was the house the teaching sisters lived in, set among the schools they taught in.

The Academy at directory size: The Official Catholic Directory of about 1924, as the Center for Research Libraries’ scan carries it, lists the Academy at 303 South Taylor Street with twenty sisters, Sister Prudentia as superior, 225 pupils, and the Rev. M. Oswald, C.S.C., as chaplain — the school at its documented fullest in the directory record. Its pupils came from across the web: the Academy’s 1953 yearbook, which survives on the Internet Archive under the title Saint Joseph’s Academy, South Bend, Indiana — Conducted by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, tags its students in its directory by their home parishes — St. Anthony, St. Matthew, Little Flower, Holy Cross, Christ the King among them — the parish grade schools of the whole city feeding the sisters’ academy, with Sister M. Anita Jane, C.S.C., as principal.

The end: The Academy’s class of 1953 was its last. That fall the city’s three Catholic secondary schools were consolidated into the new Saint Joseph High School, and the Academy’s course ended in the merger, its pupils and its sisters passing into the consolidated school, whose faculty in its first years consisted primarily of Sisters of the Holy Cross and Brothers of Holy Cross, many of them in residence. The Academy’s own building and grounds on Taylor Street do not continue as a school in the present record.

Sources:

1. Brother Aidan’s Extracts, no. 522, University of Notre Dame Archives, archives.nd.edu — the council entry of March 26, 1867 naming the Academy of St. Joseph, South Bend.
2. Blanchard (1898), as carried in Brother Aidan’s Extracts — St. Patrick’s school taught by Brothers and Sisters of Holy Cross from St. Joseph’s Academy, the girls taught in the Academy.
3. H. J. Alerding, The Diocese of Fort Wayne, 1857–1907 — the St. Hedwig’s sisters residing at St. Joseph’s Academy one block from their school.
4. Official Catholic Directory, c. 1924, Center for Research Libraries scan — the Academy at 303 South Taylor Street: twenty sisters, Sister Prudentia superior, 225 pupils, Rev. M. Oswald, C.S.C., chaplain.
5. Saint Joseph’s Academy, South Bend, Indiana — Conducted by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, the Academy’s 1953 yearbook, Internet Archive — Sister M. Anita Jane, C.S.C., principal, and the student directory’s parish tags.
6. The banked Schools fragment of this history — the 1953 consolidation into Saint Joseph High School.