Om• C atlzolic Heritage in Texas
With the building of the international railway line, Laredo soon gained importance as the chief inland port of Mexico. As the town grew and de- veloped the struggling Ursuline Academy p·rospered. In 1896, after many lean years, the Laredo Ursulines were able to begin the erection of a new building on the old site. Since then, additions were made as needed until 1939, when the old site was sold to the United States Treasury Depart- ment. They then built the present commodious convent and Academy which they now occupy. 27 In 1897, at the request of a venerable Lazarist Father, the community of Laredo gave five of its professed members for the establishment of a new foundation in Mexico City. The volunteers "bade farewell to their House of Profession, to plant the standard of St. Ursulina in the City of Mexico." The attempt was sustained for a year, when the brave invaders of the Aztec capital were forced to retire to the foundation in Puebla. 28 When a new parish school was built for St. Peter's Church, Laredo, the Ursulines gladly accepted the invitation to take charge of it. The demand for teachers was greater than they had expected, and they had to appeal for aid to the Galveston convent. Three Professed Nuns were loaned to the Laredo Community for a year in 1899. They returned to Galveston on June 10, 1900. In 1913 the Most Reverend Joseph P. Nussbaum, first Bishop of the newly created Diocese of Corpus Christi, aware of the needs of the Laredo Community assigned its members a modest salary for their serv- ices at the Holy Redeemer and Guadalupe schools. To help the Bishop they agreed to take care of a Colored school in Corpus Christi in 1917, where they worked until 1922, when the Sisters of the Holy Ghost took over the school. In 1916, the Laredo Community had the Sacred Heart School in Falfurrias, Texas, a truly missionary project, besides the other schools in Laredo for the poorer Spanish-speaking. Tlie Urmlines in Dallas, 1874. The little North Texas town at that time was greatly stimulated in 1873 by the intersection of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad line by the Texas and Pacific. Father Joseph Martiniere, later Monsignor, the only priest in the area, foresaw the future of the struggling pioneer community, and earnestly pleaded with Bishop Dubuis to send a group of Ursulines to found schools for the Christian education of youth. The Bishop presented the request to the Galveston convent, which gladly acceded, and on January 27, 1874, on the Feast of St. Angela Merici, foundress of the Order, six devoted pioneers knelt m
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11 /bid., 7-8. JaSister Ursulina, op. cit., 4.
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