Catlwlic Educational E11deavors
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modest house being built for them. Undismayed, they secured the loan of a four-room house and on the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, March 7, 1853, almost a year after they sailed from Havre, opened the second oldest school for girls in Texas, Villa Marie of the Incarnate Word. 38 Two weeks later, on March 20, the cornerstone of their first Convent in America was laid, and by November 30, 1853, the building was finished. There the Sisters conducted a boarding and day school for girls. With Mother St. Claire as Superior, the little community from France soon proved a potent help to the zealous Bishop and the missionaries of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The early years were quite strenuous. Physical discomfort, difficult climatic conditions, cyclones, tropical epidemics, and Indian attacks com- bined to make those early days almost a nightmare. Brownsville was the last outpost of civilization in South Texas. A postulant was captured and consumed by Indians on her way from Laredo; yellow fever left only one Sister to nurse the other three religious back to health; and frequent hur- ricanes swept from the Gulf over the land and not infrequently left them without a roof over their heads. 39 Reinforcements soon came from the mother convent in Lyons, France. The four pioneers were joined by Sisters Ignatius McKeon, St. John Quigly, and Lucy Chanudet before the end of 1853. The next year Bishop Odin pleaded for more workers and Sister Stanislaus Dedieu, Mary Louise Murray, and Mary of the Cross Murray were sent to help the overworked community in Brownsville. By 1875 five more had come: Sisters Joseph, M. Xavier Cadelier, St. Paul Goux, St. Pierre Chanudet, and St. Albins.' 0 In spite of sickness and hardships the foundation made steady progress until almost the end of the Civil War, which finally reached to the little town of Brownsville on the Rio Grande in 1863. The students went home when General Nathaniel P. Bankhead, U.S.A., landed at Brazos de San- tiago on the mouth of the Rio Grande, and marched to Brownsville, where General Bee, C.S.A., prepared to evacuate the now most important and last port of exportation of the Confederacy. After the fall of New Orleans, huge amounts of cotton were exported through Brownsville to Matamoros, Mexico, from where valuable medical supplies and other essentials were obtained. The Federals occupied the town under General Bankhead and cut off all remaining trade.
3BThe first was that of the Ursulines in Galveston. 39Sister Mary Xavier Holworthy, op. cit., 19. · 10 1 bid., I 9-20.
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