Catleolic Educational Endeavors
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horse. By the time the foundation was attempted, the once flourishing pioneer settlement was on the downhill grade. Sisters M. Euphrosine and M. Joseph (Dunne) gave up the struggle and returned to Notre Dame in 1879, after first disbanding the new community of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus. Those who joined the new congregation entered different religious communities in Texas. Other Sisters were sent from Notre Dame to Clarksville that same year to establish Sacred Heart Academy, a l::oarding school for girls, which was maintained with difficulty and closed after four years of futile effort. 68 St. iJtfary's Academy in Austin, I874. At the suggestion of Bishop Dubuis of Galveston, the Sisters of Holy Cross agreed in 1874 to take charge of the small parish school originally founded by Father Nicholas Feltin in Austin and cared for by the Sisters of Divine Providence for two years ( 1866-1868) prior to their going to Castroville to make a perma- nent foundation in that city. In answer to an invitation made in 1873, Mother Mary of St. Angela, Superior of the Sisters of Holy Cross, came in person to investigate the situation and survey the prospects for the establishment of a girls' boarding school. Satisfied with conditions and having title to a city block next to St. Mary's Church for the contem- plated academy, she sent four Sisters in 1874 to establish a permanent foundation and take over the school in the little "rock" house put up by Father Feltin. 69 The school for girls was now renamed St. Mary's and opened in the spring of 1874. "The scene of the first labors of the Sisters of Holy Cross in Austin was a cabin with two poor little rooms, the site of which is now covered by the sacristy of St. Mary's Church. 70 The combined convent and school was primitive and devoid of all con- Yeniences. The large ground room with partitions served as parlor, class- room, study hall, music hall, dining room for students, and sewing room. The upstairs room, a rough finished garret, was divided into a sleeping apartment for the Sisters and a dormitory for the boarders. The first boarder was Elizabeth Lubbock, the daughter of ex-Governor Lubbock. By June, 1875, there were eight-two day pupils enrolled. The Sisters and 68 Joseph G. O'Donohue, C.S.C., "Sister Mary of St. Euphrosine, C.S.C.," The Southern Messenger, July 9, 1936; Wiedman, op. cit., 14-16. 69 Raymond J. Clancy, C.S.C., "The Congregation of the Holy Cross in the Diocese of Galveston," MS. In C. A. T., 14-1 s; Sister Edward Marie Cahill, C.S.C., "The Sisters of the Holy Cross in Texas," MS. in Incarnate Word College, San An- tonio, 3-4. 70Cahill, op. cit., ,4.
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