Irish Nuns and Education in the Anglophone World,1800–1900

Abstract

This article provides an account of some of the education provisions by Irish women religious, in the Anglophone world, in the nineteenth century. Although many orders sent Sisters around the globe, to both establish and run schools for English-speaking children, the main focus of this article is on two Irish orders, the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Sisters of Mercy. While the work of other female congregations is noted, the focus on these two orders reflects the fact that they spread quickly around the globe, attracting many Irish vocations and eventually making a substantial contribution to education. The Sisters of Mercy were also known for their work in health care; however, the focus of this article is on education. The article commences with a review of the research in the field and the approaches taken by historians. The article also notes some lacunae in research and points to areas that merit more attention. The article then examines the experience of Irish nuns overseas and the contribution of the Mercy and Presentation nuns.

Although nineteenth-century Ireland witnessed the dramatic growth in power of the Catholic Church, the role of women—and especially teaching Sisters in that expansion—has only had limited attention by scholars. ¹ They played a major part in the expansion of Catholic schooling in the Anglophone world, and it is fair to say that they had a significant role in shaping the contours of girls’ schooling on two continents. Nineteenth-century North American and European female education is imprinted with the legacy of teaching Sisters, some of which has been examined by historians; less is known of the missionary impetus that impelled Sisters to go from Europe and North America to teach in parts of Australia, India and Africa. The history of the global movement of teaching Sisters during the second half of the nineteenth century is poorly understood, and there is a paucity of research on the place of Irish-born Sisters within that movement. ² When a historiography of teaching Sisters was completed by Bart Hellinckx et al. in 2010, under the title The Forgotten Contribution of the Teaching Sisters, A Historiographical Essay on the Educational Work of Catholic Women Religious in the 19th and 20th Centuries, the need for more research on Irish teaching Sisters became clear. Hellinckx et al. reminded us of the much earlier arguments of Margaret McCurtain and Catriona Clear: ’Nuns have suffered the fate of historical marginalisation’. ³

The call to scholars to address gaps in the historical narrative, whereby teaching Sisters were almost completely excluded, was also made by historians of education including Elizabeth M. Smyth, whose work has examined convent schooling in Canada. In France and Britain, scholarship on women’s religious and education has benefitted from the work of Rebecca Rogers, Sarah Curtis, Phil Kilroy and Carmen Mangion. ⁴ Some work on Australia and New Zealand has been done by Christine Trimingham-Jack, Stephanie Burley and Jenny Collins, but again there is room for considerably more research on teaching Sisters in the nineteenth century. ⁵ Research in this field, until comparatively recently, was summed up by Hellinckx et al. who wrote, ‘the vast majority of the publications about the involvement of women religious in education [were] histories either of individual teaching orders or of individual educational establishments’. ⁶ Frank Simon, a historian of education, has noted that many of these works were written by a member of the community or by a past-pupil or teacher at the school, and some were jubilee volumes. Having analysed a range of school jubilee publications that were published in Belgium between 1977 and 1972, Frank Simon wryly noted that ‘these works give historians little reason to be jubilant’. ⁷ However, as I have noted elsewhere, such publications can be useful to scholars, as they often signal the whereabouts of primary sources, congregational records and useful information on individuals that help the historian’s search for materials. ⁸ Occasionally, anniversary publications have been commissioned by religious orders, and sometimes the authors – especially when they were Sisters – had unfettered access to records. Sister-archivists have also played an important role in communicating some of the richness of the collections in their charge. ⁹ But a difficulty is that many publications written by Sisters were privately published, anticipating a small circulation among friends and not expecting that, at a future time, these works would become useful to researchers. ¹⁰ It is, therefore, crucial that convents that are closing, and orders that are moving towards completion, should not discard these publications – however modest they may seem – and that they should be kept with collections and/or given to appropriate libraries where there are large collections of materials on Catholic history.

The practice of producing ‘insider’ accounts of orders of nuns, written by Sisters, has now diminished. This is in part because religious orders are in decline and there are fewer Sisters, and in part because Sisters recognise that their community histories are best served by being part of a wider historical narrative. For women religious, this has involved debate, discernment and a willingness to engage openly with lay scholars. The establishment of the US Conference of Historians of Women Religious (1988) and a similar European network called the History of Women Religious, Britain and Ireland (2001) brought scholars, Sisters and congregational archivists together in ways that resulted in a slow but very steady growth in research outputs including peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals, academic histories that opened up new areas of enquiry and collections of sources and biographical materials that have proved invaluable to scholarship. ¹¹ By allowing historians into their archives, and giving access to heretofore closed ‘private’ collections, Sisters have done a service to their own history. Together with a handful of distinguished Sister-historians, for the last three decades lay historians were the people who conducted the research that has positioned women religious within the history of medicine, social work, women’s history, the history of education and the history of the Catholic Church. ¹²

The shifts and changes in the writing of the history of women religious suggests that, as more archives are opened to scholars, more work will be done. One of the areas that demand considerable attention is the movement of women religious around the globe, during the nineteenth century, as orders expanded, and the missionary impulse drove them to go to countries to evangelise or to minister to the needs of migrant Catholics. Irish-born Sisters were at the centre of this kind of movement and engaged in a kind of transnational cultural exchange that is only beginning to be researched. ¹³ They brought teaching methods, together with Irish music and literature, to the countries where they ministered, and archival records in those countries contain important records of how this ministry and mission was received. While this article can provide only a broad outline of the extent of the movement of Irish-born Sisters around the globe in the nineteenth century, it is hoped that it can nonetheless give a sense of the vast landscape – literal and figurative – of their missionary effort, an effort which merits detailed research and analysis. ¹⁴

Irish Convents and the Recruitment of Women for the Mission Field

The growth in religious vocations for Irish women increased rapidly in nineteenth-century Ireland. ¹⁵ The late eighteenth century saw the repeal of penal legislation that had severely limited education provision for Catholics. ¹⁶ The relaxation of laws that had prevented Catholics from setting up schools, and from sending their children out of the country for a Catholic education, meant that it became possible for priests, brothers and nuns to establish schools. The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed the growing confidence of the Catholic church in Ireland as a consequence of Catholic Emancipation. While historians have debated the degree to which there was a radical change in the participation of Catholics in the life of their Church, it is clear that there were some important changes in the provision for Catholics, including the growth of formal Catholic schooling. The speed with which the landscape of religious life changed has been noted in scholarship. Catriona Clear and others have demonstrated the expansion of religious orders, indicating that while there were approximately 122 nuns in Ireland in 1800, by 1901 there were 8031, giving a ratio of one nun per 400 members of the population. Convents spread across the country: in the second half of the century, not only were a further 277 convents built in Ireland, but the rate of vocations increased ninefold. Orders became particularly influential in education in counties (and diocese) where they had several schools. The East and South-East of the country were dominated by Presentation convents, for example, which were established every 2–3 years over a period of 60 years (1789–1850). ¹⁷ By the middle of the nineteenth century, Presentation convents accounted for half of the 91 convents in the country. ¹⁸ The convents of the Sisters of Mercy, and their schools, also played a major role in the spread of Catholic schooling. Although not formally established until 1831, by the turn of the twentieth century, the Sisters of Mercy were the largest providers of female national schooling in the country. Between 1834 and 1862, a total of 79 Mercy convents were established in Ireland. ¹⁹ By 1900, this figure had risen to approximately 140 foundations, the vast majority of which included both convent and national schools. ²⁰

The growth in vocations to religious life reflected the attraction of the new indigenous orders, and orders that arrived from Continental Europe, presenting Irish women with the opportunity to become part of an active apostolate, teaching in schools and ministering to the needs of the sick and the poor. The expansion of convent schooling meant that increasing numbers of Irish girls were exposed to the ‘rhythms of religious life’: prayer, daily mass, novenas and the celebration of feast days. ²¹ In addition, as noted by Fahey, religious life offered women the chance to assume leadership, founding and managing hospitals and networks of schools. As Fahey has argued, ‘the Catholic Church provided an option in life to its female members that had no counterpart in the Protestant churches and denominations’. Although women religious held a subordinate position within the Catholic church, they had many opportunities to develop their intellects, and to use their creativity and ingenuity – especially concerning building projects and convent expansion. ²²

For nineteenth-century Irish women who did not want marriage or childbirth, the convent held out the only possibility of a ‘respectable’ alternative to family life or the spectre of ‘spinsterhood’. There were other ‘push’ factors that may have impelled women to enter convents, including poverty and even starvation. Convents entrants were increasing in number even as the country was witnessing famine and mass emigration. ²³

Irish Sisters and Expansion in Education at Home and Abroad

Two orders that made a substantial contribution to both national and international education in the nineteenth century were the Presentation Sisters and the Sisters of Mercy. Prior to the implementation of the treasury-funded National System in 1831, there was no ‘official’ school system in Ireland. The restrictions placed on Irish Catholics as a result of the Penal Laws meant that education in general was limited and the provision of schooling for Irish females was practically non-existent. For the greater part of the eighteenth century, Irish Catholic gentry were obliged to send their daughters to Continental Europe, to schools such as those run by the Benedictines in Ypres and the Ursulines or Dames de St Maur in Paris. ²⁴ Here, young ladies were instructed in all the modes of female deportment and respectability expected of their social status. Convent education was particularly important for élite Catholic girls as it represented the ‘first step in her transformation into a virtuous Christian woman’. ²⁵ Following the passing of the Relief Act, 1782, educational provision for Catholics in Ireland improved, and continental Catholic religious orders began to found convent boarding schools throughout the country. ²⁶ Nonetheless, progress in female education was slow and unbalanced. While convent boarding schools catered specifically for affluent Irish Catholics, prospects for the majority of working-class girls remained limited. One girl who benefitted from continental education was Honora (Nano) Nagle, a member of a wealthy and prominent Catholic family from Cork.

Honora, or Nano as she was more affectionally called, was born in 1718 in Ballygriffin, County Cork. Her parents, Ann Mathew and Garrett Nagle, were Catholic gentry, who amassed wealth from their lease of land, overseas investments, and from their involvement in the legal profession. On the family estate at Ballygriffin, the young Nano had a privileged upbringing. Nano was the oldest of seven children and, in light of penal legislation, is likely to have received her earliest education from a travelling scholar-teacher or hedge-school master. ²⁷ The Nagles were not unlike other Catholics of their social standing who, as previously outlined, often sent their children abroad to complete their education. When Nano was about 10 years old, she was sent to a convent boarding school on the continent. Although no records survive from this particular period in Nano’s life, it has been suggested that she may have been educated by the Benedictines at Ypres in Belgium. ²⁸ On completion of her schooling, Nano spent some time in Paris; following her father’s death sometime around 1746, she returned to Ireland. Nano’s mother and sister, Ann, died in quick succession and by 1749, Nano found herself back on the family estate in Ballygriffin under the protection of her brother, David. ²⁹ It was during this time that Nano became aware of the widespread poverty and complete lack of educational provisions for poor Catholics in Ireland. Undoubtedly moved by the deprivation of those less fortunate than herself, Nano decided to establish a school in a rented cabin in Cove Lane. ³⁰ By this time, she was living with her brother Joseph in Cork city where the need for schools for the poor was great; by 1769, she was running seven schools in the city, five for girls and two for boys. But Nano understood the limitations of her work and realised the need to secure an efficient supply of teachers in order to help manage her ever-growing schools. Orders of teaching Sisters were plentiful in continental Europe, and in 1771 Nano recruited four Ursuline Sisters from France to help run her schools. ³¹ Nano had been left a large sum of money by her uncle Joseph following his death in 1757, some of which she used to bring the nuns to Ireland and building a convent for them in Cove Lane. ³² However, shortly after the Ursulines arrived in Cork, it became apparent that their rule of enclosure would prevent them from teaching the poor outside the convent walls. If Nano’s poor schools were to continue, she needed a group of women religious who would be free to leave their enclosure. The only option was to found her own congregation of teaching Sisters, and in 1775, she established a community for the sole purpose of providing education to the poor. They would eventually evolve into an Order, known as the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. ³³

The Presentation Sisters were the first modern, indigenous religious congregation to be established in Ireland since the Reformation. Nagle’s vision spearheaded an era of change in Ireland, as congregations of women religious were founded to provide for the spiritual and secular education of young Irish Catholic girls. In 1831, the Sisters of Mercy became part of that change when Catherine McAuley established her first foundation in Baggot Street, Dublin. Central to the apostolic mission of both religious orders was a constitutional commitment to the education of the poor, specifically poor Catholic girls. ³⁴ In a letter dated 17 July 1769, Nagle explained to her friend Miss Fitzsimons, the type of education provided in her poor schools: ‘the girls learn to read, and when they have the Catechism by heart, they learn to work, they all hear Mass every day say their morning and night prayers, say the Catechism in each school by question and answer all together’. ³⁵ Religious instruction certainly featured heavily in Nano’s schools. The school day was punctuated with the observation of Catholic prayers, customs and traditions. But her schools also served another purpose, providing girls with the necessary skills to gain employment. Practical instruction in various types of needlework such as sewing and knitting formed part of the education offered in Nano’s schools and provided her pupils with an opportunity to develop skills that would enable them to earn a livelihood.

Catherine McAuley completed her religious training with the Presentation Sisters, at their Dublin convent, in George’s Hill. It is, therefore, not unexpected that she would adopt many of their Rules for her own congregation of women religious. ³⁶ Inspired by Nagle’s novel approach to the education of the poor, McAuley’s Sisters of Mercy also incorporated practical instruction into the education of the poor girls who attended their schools. ³⁷ While the vast majority of continental convent schools that were in operation at this time focused on delivering an academic type education, a feature which continued well into the twentieth century, Presentation-Mercy tradition allowed for more rounded instruction. In combining religious, literary and practical instruction and catering for those for whom education was otherwise largely unattainable, these schools served an unconventional but valuable purpose in Irish society during the nineteenth century.

By the time the national school system was introduced in 1831, the Presentations were well placed to benefit from the incentives offered by the scheme. In order to be recognised under the National School System, these convent schools had to contend with the Broad’s conditions regarding the operation and general organisation of their schools. Such conditions included keeping a record of daily attendances, permitting Commissioners to conduct inspections, admitting pupils of all denominations and ensuring that the Board’s regulations were strictly adhered to. ³⁸ As noted by Raftery et al., many of the Board’s directives for school management had already been developed and subsequently adopted in Presentation schools from the late eighteenth century. Information including the names and age of pupils, names and occupations of their parents, and home address were all recorded by the Sisters in their schools. ³⁹ For example, in Doneraile, the Presentation School Register contained the data of the 398 children attending their school during its first year of operation in 1818. ⁴⁰ Similarly, the community in Mitchelstown took details of more than 600 children who enrolled in their school when it first opened in 1853. ⁴¹ When the Commissioners of the National Board carried out a survey of convent schooling in 1864, many Presentations, and indeed Mercy schools, were found to be operating well under the Board’s directives and general regulations. For example, in the Mercy convent national school in Ennis, it was reported that ‘reading, writing and grammar are as well taught in this convent school as in the more respectable lay schools’ while music and needlework were ‘better taught in this than in ordinary girls’ schools’. ⁴² In the Presentation convent national school in Thurles, the inspector acknowledged that ‘The Board’s rules are strictly observed’ and the school was noted as being ‘superior’ in music and needlework instruction and ‘infinitely superior to all other schools in the district’ in terms of ‘attractive influence in bringing children of the poor under instruction’. ⁴³

A key component of the National School System was ‘to unite in one system children of different creeds’. ⁴⁴ In order for this to be successfully achieved, the Board directed that national schools should provide ‘combined literary and separate religious instruction’. ⁴⁵ It was expected that one day per week would be set aside for religious instruction and that during ordinary school hours religious observations and practices would not be acknowledged. ⁴⁶ Religious symbols and artefacts were also not permitted on school premises. ⁴⁷ However, it seems that despite the ability of convent authorities to conform to the secular demands of the National Board, other regulations were not so readily adhered to. In 1857, for example, the Presentation Sisters in Listowel recorded in their Annals that

Last year was so marked with great crosses that we omitted to notice a minor one which was impending, regarding to, a material Cross, namely the cross over the gable end of [the] school house which the Commissioners of N. Board repeatedly required should be taken down. Some months before the death of our loved Fr Mahony he had several communications from the Board, threatening to sever its connection with the Convent school if the Cross were not removed. He replied refusing . . . An inspector was sent down to see the position of the Cross and to report on it. Then another missive saying the salary would be withdrawn next quarter. Another inspector came and he urged the matter strongly . . . At the close of the conversation he asked could anything make us yield. The reply was ‘Nothing but authority’. ‘What authority?’ ‘The only authority we acknowledge in the matter is that of the Bishop. ⁴⁸

Although the debate between the Presentation Sisters in Listowel and the National Broad continued for some time, it seems that the cross was never removed from the school. As noted in Raftery et al., ‘inspectors generally adopted a somewhat benign approach to the enforcing of rules concerning prayers and iconography, and many admired the cloistered Catholic women that they saw running large convents and schools’. ⁴⁹ Indeed, it seems that the vast majority of convent schools which entered into the National School System were by and large left to their own devices. Gradually, as the Presentation and Mercy orders expanded their foundations throughout the country, an increasing number of their schools became connected with the National Board. By 1900, the Mercy and Presentation orders were the largest providers of female primary schooling in the country with 140 and 60 national schools, respectively. ⁵⁰

International Expansion

As noted above, the nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic growth in the number of Catholic female religious orders in Ireland, and their involvement in female education throughout the country had the effect of attracting girls to religious life. This period also saw their involvement in education outside their own country. Although many Irish women had entered Catholic religious orders in Continental Europe during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, prior to the 1830s no Irish order had established a foundation overseas. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, Irish Sisters had established convents in many parts of North America and had become a clear presence in Australia and New Zealand; they were also establishing schools with an evangelising mission, in places such as Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and India. The rapid expansion of Irish Catholic female religious congregations across the globe was undoubtedly linked to the broader Irish missionary movement which emerged in the 1830s as a result of incessant Irish Catholic migration to various countries throughout the world. In an attempt to safeguard the moral and spiritual welfare of the Irish diaspora, the Catholic hierarchy appealed to female religious congregations to administer works of pastoral evangelisation in the districts and regions where Irish people settled. Central to sustaining and protecting the faith of Ireland’s dispersed Catholic populations was the provision of Catholic education, and during the nineteenth century, the Presentation and Mercy orders were well positioned to respond to the call to send Sisters around the globe.

During the nineteenth century, the international mission of both the Presentation and Mercy orders evolved and expanded rapidly. In 1833, the Presentation Sisters established their first mission overseas, when four members from the Galway community were sent to Newfoundland. This venture was an important turning point, not just in the history of the congregation but, in the history of Irish Catholic missionary activity, as the Presentation Sisters became the first Irish order to establish a foundation outside of Ireland. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Presentation Sisters had formed a global missionary network with houses in England (1836), India (1842), America (1854), Tasmania (1866), and Australia (1873). ⁵¹ The Mercy order similarly responded to the increased demands and needs of the Irish diaspora during the nineteenth century. In 1839, the Mercy foundress, Catherine McAuley established their first foundation outside of Ireland in Bermondsey, London. The 1840s became a particularly fruitful time for Mercy expansion into overseas territories with new foundations being established in Newfoundland (1842), America (1843) and Australia (1845). ⁵² In each of these initial locations, the Presentation and Mercy Sisters opened schools and other educational institutions and in so doing responded directly to the appeals of the Catholic hierarchy and their pastoral evangelisation mission. But while bishops could make petitions to religious communities to send Sisters to found schools and could organise all ‘necessary’ arrangements for their initial arrival, the success of these missions ultimately depended on the ability of the pioneering Sisters themselves to respond to and overcome the many challenges of managing a fledgling foundation while also adapting to new environs, climates and peoples.

The case of the arrival of the Sisters of Mercy in America in 1843 is illustrative of the challenges that faced women religious when making new foundations, and the ways that they rose to these challenges and managed to expand their schools. On 15 August 1843, Dr Michael O’Connor was appointed the first Bishop of Pittsburgh. ⁵³ At the time, Pittsburgh had a Catholic population of approximately 20,000, three churches and twelve priests. ⁵⁴ Bishop O’Connor knew that he needed ‘religious, self-sacrificing nuns to conduct schools for the young, homes for the aged, and hospitals for the sick’. ⁵⁵ Like Bishop Fleming in Newfoundland, Bishop O’Connor immediately set about acquiring religious to assist in the pastoral work of his new diocese. On 4 October 1843, he arrived in St Leo’s Mercy Convent Carlow to petition the community for their help. ⁵⁶ At the time, the Carlow foundation had only been in existence for 6 years but the community had grown quickly and there were 23 Sisters residing in St Leo’s, many of whom were eager to join the mission to Pittsburgh. ⁵⁷ According to the Annals of the Carlow community,

Of those selected Sister M. Josephine Cullen was named as the Mother Superior, but the Bishops and Father Maher having given the matter further consideration thought it wiser to appoint Mother M. Francis Warde for whose judgement and experience this arduous mission would afford ample scope. ⁵⁸

Mother Francis Warde had entered the Mercy order in Baggot Street and was professed on 24 January 1833. ⁵⁹ Following her profession, Mother Francis had been involved in the establishment of four other foundations in Ireland including Carlow (1837), Naas (1839), Wexford (1840), and Westport (1842). ⁶⁰ She had served as the first Mother Superior of the convent in Carlow and at the time of Bishop O’Connor’s visit held the position of Mother Assistant. ⁶¹ Given the wealth of experience which Mother Francis had acquired in a relatively short period of time, it is not surprising that she was chosen to lead the first Mercy mission to America.

Six other Sisters were selected to accompany Mother Francis to Pittsburgh: Sister M. Josephine Cullen, Sister M. Elizabeth Strange, Sister M. Aloysia Strange, Sister Margaret O’Brien, Sister M Philomena Reid (novice), and Sister Veronica McDarby (lay sister). ⁶² The pioneering Sisters were described as being ‘highly educated’, ‘wise’ and ‘talented’, possessing ‘fine minds’ and ‘great-hearted charity’ as well as being considered ‘pillars of strength’. ⁶³ Such qualities and attributes would undoubtedly have been considered essential among any pioneering group embarking on a new mission in the nineteenth century.

Together with Bishop O’Connor, the seven Sisters chosen to lead the mission left Carlow on 4 November, 1843. The group went by coach to Naas, where they ‘stayed at the convent there that night, proceeded to the Parent House [Baggot Street] next day, and remained there only a day before setting sail for Liverpool’. ⁶⁴ The Sisters had to spend a few days with their community in Liverpool as the ship that was to take them to America was not ready to depart. Finally, on 10 November, the Queen of the West set sail from Liverpool. The nuns were afforded some comfort and privacy on the ship, and ‘the ladies’ state-rooms were given to the Sisters’ so that they could remain secluded from the rest of the passengers. ⁶⁵ Four weeks after leaving Liverpool, the Sisters arrived in New York where they spent a couple of days in the Sacred Heart Convent Houston, recovering from their journey. ⁶⁶ They then travelled via railroad to Philadelphia before commencing the final leg of their journey across the Allegheny Mountains to Pittsburgh. On 20 December 1843, after a long and difficult journey, the pioneering Sisters from Carlow finally arrived in Pittsburgh, USA. ⁶⁷

Like many Irish female religious who responded to appeals from the Catholic hierarchy for new foundations in their ecclesiastical territories, both at home and abroad, the first Mercy Sisters to arrive in Pittsburgh were met with difficulties. On arrival there, the Sisters found that there was no convent ready for them and they were required to spend some time with the Sisters of Charity in Webster Avenue. ⁶⁸ In the meantime, Bishop O’Connor leased a four-storey red brick building on Penn Avenue to serve as the first Mercy convent in America. ⁶⁹ Although a good sturdy building, contents were sparse. Fortunately, before the pioneering group had left Carlow, Dr Healy, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, had consented to allow the Sisters to take their dowries with them to Pittsburgh. ⁷⁰ On taking up residence at Penn Avenue on 22–23 December 1843, Mother Francis immediately set about using the money to help furnish their new convent. ⁷¹

In early January 1844, the Sisters commenced their work. Among their initial duties were ‘visitation of the sick and giving of instructions to adults’. ⁷² A Cathedral Sunday School for girls was also established by the Sisters with 500 pupils in attendance. ⁷³ In February 1844, the first American postulant, Miss Eliza Jane Tiernan, entered the community in Pittsburgh. ⁷⁴ According to the Memoirs of the Pittsburgh Sisters of Mercy, she had a ‘superior education’ and brought with her an ‘ample dowry’ both of which would undoubtedly have been a welcome addition to the fledgling community. ⁷⁵ In September 1844, the Sisters opened an academy for young girls in the long basement room of their convent. A parlour upstairs was converted into a music room where Sister Philomena and Sister Xavier (Eliza Tiernan) provided music lessons. ⁷⁶ The academy for young girls expanded rapidly, and the Sisters soon outgrew the limited accommodation of their basement and parlour.

In 1844, negotiations began between Bishop O’Connor and Mr Henry Kuhn, Westmoreland Co, for the establishment of a Mercy convent and school on his farm in St Vincent’s parish. The deed to the farm, which consisted of 108 acres, was subsequently transferred to Bishop O’Connor for the sum of one dollar. ⁷⁷ The Sisters in Pittsburgh were initially hesitant to move their academy to St Vincent’s parish. Although the farm and its buildings would provide the Sisters with the much-needed space to accommodate their pupils, the conditions secured by Bishop O’Connor ultimately conflicted with the principle Rules of their institute: the proposed new academy was expected to admit boarders but the Rules of the institute clearly stated that the Sisters could not take boarders. Bishop O’Connor, however, obtained permission from the Holy See to permit the Sisters to establish a boarding school. ⁷⁸ The bishop also reminded the Sisters of their need to become self-supporting. This, he suggested, could be achieved through the fees charged to the boarders and also by means of establishing a working farm in St Vincent’s. ⁷⁹ With these assurances, the Pittsburgh community consented to the new foundation.

Mother Josephine Cullen, one of the pioneering group from Carlow, was appointed to lead the new foundation in St Vincent’s. Five other Sisters from the Mother House in Pittsburgh joined her. ⁸⁰ When they first arrived at their new home in St Vincent’s parish, the Sisters again found that much work needed to be done to ready the house and grounds for their schools:

The farm not having been under cultivation for some time, the Sisters were obliged to purchase every article of food for their household and stock; most of these commodities had to be brought by wagon from Pittsburgh. The small school at St Vincent’s was liberally patronised; as many pupils came as the house could accommodate. The Sisters also taught a small day school for the children of the parish in the Sacristy of the Church, thus started hand in hand the Academy and parochial schools in the salubrious air of Westmoreland Co. ⁸¹

The new foundation in St Vincent’s ultimately provided the Pittsburgh community with an opportunity to extend their educational provision. However, it also brought new challenges, not least acquiring a sufficient supply of Sister-teachers to help run their schools. Such were the growing responsibilities assumed by the extended community in Pittsburgh that in the summer of 1845, Mother Francis returned to Ireland to gather new recruits and volunteers for their American mission. ⁸² In December 1845, she returned with five sisters and two postulants. ⁸³ With the increase in sisters, the community in Pittsburgh were able to extend their mission once again and in 1846, they took responsibility for the operation of an orphanage on Coal Lane. ⁸⁴

In the 2 years that followed their arrival in Pittsburgh, the pioneering group from Carlow had grown their community to 32 Sisters and three convents. They operated six schools and oversaw the education of 420 pupils. ⁸⁵ In 1846, the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh embarked on a new mission when they established a foundation in Chicago. Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, the Mercy Sisters in Pittsburgh continued to expand across America with new foundations in Loretto, Pennsylvania (1848), Baltimore (1855), and Providence, Rhode Island (1881). ⁸⁶ Other Irish communities of Mercy nuns also contributed to the expansion of the order in America: in 1846, the Sisters of Mercy from Baggott Street established their first community in New York; a group of Sisters from Naas were sent to Little Rock (1851); the Sisters in Kinsale were responsible for the establishment of San Francisco (1854) and Cincinnati (1858); in 1872, the community in Ennis sent two groups to Connecticut, one to Middletown and the other to Meriden. ⁸⁷

Conclusion

Although the limits of space have allowed this article to review only a small sample of women religious who were involved in the spread of schooling in the Anglophone world during the nineteenth century, it has been possible to indicate the pioneering work of two indigenous Orders, the Presentation Sisters and the Sisters of Mercy. Both played a central role in the education of girls in Ireland, and both offered girls and women a newly evolving female space, the Irish convent, in which to be formed for a life working either at home or on an overseas mission. Scholarship has been generous to the history of the involvement of Irish priests and brothers in the global mission field during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ⁸⁸ However, there has been almost no attention to teaching Sisters that left the island to work in education in North America, Australia and many other parts of the world. Increasingly, as the archives of religious institutes are opening to scholars, it is becoming possible to chart the movement of Sisters around the globe and to analyse their experience of religious life, and their involvement in education. Adopting different theoretical frameworks, including the optic of transnationalism, allows researchers to approach these archives with new questions about women’s work, women’s travel and women’s spiritual and intellectual growth. ⁸⁹ New questions need to be asked about how Irish women religious were received in the countries where they missioned, and thorough assessments of the economic value of their labour need to be undertaken. There are thousands of convent archival collections: this is a research field that is ripe for work and that will repay generations of scholars for their research.