Catholic Ed11cational Endeavors
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reached their destination on May 15, 1868. The town was small and un- inviting. Its 2,000 inhabitants were largely Mexicans. The few Americans were almost invariably Protestants. Mother St. Joseph immediately rented rooms from a Catholic family near St. Augustine's Church and there began to assemble young girls of every age and condition for instruction, while waiting for the convent, started twenty years before by Bishop Odin, to be made fit for occupancy. Fathers Sauchon and John C. Neraz, the future Bishop of San Antonio, delighted at the prospect of a permanent founda- tion, worked diligently, aided by Raymond Martin, a layman, to finish the building. When the two founding Nuns of St. Ursula took formal possession of their convent school on March 30, 1869, the whole town rejoiced with them. Two Choir Nuns and two lay Sisters had previously come to help them, so that the Community now consisted of six members.: 4 Growtlz. a11d Development. A chapel was set up in the largest room, but due to the scarcity of priests and the cloistered nature of the Order, many were the days and even weeks when the members of the community were deprived of the great consolation of hearing Mass. In 1874 Sister St. Teresa was recalled by her Superiors in Galveston. That year, too, Mother St. Joseph completed her term of office as Superior. Consequently, Bishop Dubuis, with the consent of all parties concerned, appointed Mother St. Claude Nicout Superioress of Laredo. Mother St. Claude, a professed religious of New Orleans, had helped out and held various offices in the community of San Antonio before she went to Laredo. With short intermissions, this remarkable daughter of St. Ursula, governed the Laredo convent and Academy successfully until 1892. In that year, with the consent of the Rt. Reverend Peter Verdaguer, Vicar Apostolic of Brownsville, she led a small party of Ursulines at the request of the Bishop of Puebla, into Mexico to found a house of the Order in Puebla. Accord- ing to an historian of the Ursulines, she endured there "a long though bloodless martyrdom" in her declining years. 25 Her sacrifices were not in vain, for the house in Puebla flourished in spite of many obstacles and "was able to aid materially the Motherhouse in Laredo.": 6 24 Sister M. A. Ursulina, "Excerpts," 4; The Ursuline Sisters, Laredt1, Te.ras, 3-4. 2 5 Sister M. A. Ursulina, "Excerpts," 4. 26 Mother St. Claude was born near Grenoble, France, in 1838. Her confessor, the Cure of Ars, is said to have told her that she would one day become a great saint at the cost of much suffering and many sacrifices. She eventually returned to Galveston after over twenty years of service in Mexico. She died in Galveston November 23. 1915, where she had made her profession more than half a century before. The UrsuU,re Academy, l.aredt1, Te:ras, 5,
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