Catlwlic Educatio1tal Endetrvors
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still pressing onward, making mistakes, no doubt, but ever hoping that in the end things will turn out for His sake and that of the poor and the suffering." 83 Mother M. Theresa and four Mercy Sisters from Chicago came to Paris, Texas, in 1896. Mother Theresa was the sister of the Most Reverend Patrick Muldoon of St. Louis. The Sisters lived in the Woolridge house for two months, purchased three lots in Clarksville Street, where St. Joseph's Hospital stands today, and built their convent there. Four years later, in 1900, they erected St. Patrick's Academy, named in honor of Bishop Muldoon. For several years they operated a day and boarding school until it was converted into a hospital and turned over to the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word. 84 Sisters of Loretto at tlee Foot of tlee Cross, I879. This, the first re- ligious order founded in America without foreign affiliation or connection, was established by the Reverend Charles Nerinckx, an exiled Belgian priest who came to Kentucky in 1805. Seven years later, on April 25, 1812, in the little log church of St. Charles, at Hardin's Creek, Kentucky, Father Nerinckx officiated at the religious investiture of Mary Rhodes, Christina Stuart and Nancy Havern, the first three Sisters of the new American community destined to carry the torch of Catholic education westward on the crest of the relentless wave of pioneers going west. In answer to an appeal of the Most Reverend J. B. Lamy, the newly appointed Vicar Apostolic of New Mexico, they sat out resolutely from St. Louis on June 27, 1852, for distant Santa Fe, New Mexico, to write a heroic chapter in the Golden West. Three months later, after enduring unbelievable hard- ships, they began their work of education in Santa Fe. 15 At the request of the Reverend Peter Bourgade, then pastor of St. Elizario Church near present El Paso, later to become Archbishop of New Mexico, the first five Sisters of Loretto at the Foot of the Cross to come to Texas set out from New Mexico in 1879 to open St. Joseph's School at the little town of San Elizario. Although they arrived in the summer, the school was not opened until October because the building was not ready. In an adobe house with glazed muslin windows and earthen floors, the UTheir hospital work will be discussed in another chapter cin the subject. The sum- mary of their educational work is based on a letter from Sister M. Cecilia, R.S.M., to the Author, Slaton, Texas, July 14, 1951. Placed in C. A. T. "From a brief account written by Elmita T. Kirkpatrick, copy in C. A. T. The hospital is St. Joseph's. See next chapter for details on hospital work. 15Dehey, o;. cu., 101-105.
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