Catleolic Edttcational Eudeavors
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just finished by Father Pinto. Sister Magdalene was named principal and Sisters Mary Nerinckx Tompkins, Baptiste Beltran, and Mary Charles Mudd were assigned teachers of the new school. It opened on October 15, 1892, with two hundred students. In 1899 a second story was added, which made available four additional classrooms, and the enrollment doubled in September, while the faculty was increased to six Sisters. Each year saw the new school develop and new buildings and additions were put up. In 1949 property was acquired on South Mesa and Seventh Streets for a new Sacred Heart School of Arts and Trades.8 7 St. Joseph's Academy for girls was continued in the original location in El Paso until 1922, when it was transferred to a spacious new building built by Mother Prazedes Carty in an attractive residential section of the city. The old buildings offered a welcome asylum to the refugee nuns from Mexico during the Calles persecution of the Church in Mexico in 1926. After normalcy was restored, and the refugees returned to Mexico, the I.orettines opened a high school for girls in Old St. Joseph's in 1934, which is still in operation. Besides the two Academies of Loretto and St. Joseph's, the Sisters of Loretto at the Foot of the Cross also conduct six parochial schools in El Paso, and Mary Star of the Sea in Freeport, Texas, where a new founda- tion was established in 1949. Sisters of the Third Order of St. Dominic Come to Texas, 1882. The Dominican Community of the Sacred Heart Convent in Galveston had its beginning in Columbus, Ohio, where, at the invitation of Bishop Sylvester Horton Rosecrans, Sisters Agnes Magevney and Mary Rose Lynch founded a new community and opened the Sacred Heart Academy. The years after the death of the Bishop, in 1878, the community transferred for a time to Somerset, Ohio." Father Nicholas A. Gallagher had known the Sisters and their work in Ohio. When, in 1882, he became the third Bishop of the Diocese of Galveston, one of his first acts was to invite the Ohio Community of the Sisters of St. Dominic to move to Galveston. The Most Reverend John A. Watterson of Ohio, when informed of the request, telegraphed Galveston, "Have learned from Mother Mary Agnes ... at Convent of the Sacred Heart at Somerset, Perry County, Ohio, Gallagher is willing to receive the community in Galveston. Bishop Watterson transfers all right and
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17 /bid., 7 5-85. 11 Dehey, o-j. cit., 154-155.
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