Alice Lalor

Teresa Lalor, V.H.M. (born ca. 1769, County Laois, Ireland; d. 9 September 1846, Washington, D.C.) was an Irish immigrant to the United States, and a nun, co-foundress, with the Most Rev. Leonard Neale, S.J., the second Archbishop of Baltimore, of the Visitation Order's first monastery in the United States.

Christened Alice, she was born in County Laois, Ireland, the daughter of Denis and Catherine Lalor, but moved with her family to Ballyragget, Co Kilkenny as a child. Her childhood was spent in Ireland with her sisters. At her request, John Lanigan, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Ossory, made arrangements for her entrance into a convent of his diocese which her family opposed. She however, instead agreed to accompany her sister, Mrs. Doran and her husband, an American merchant to America, during the winter of 1794. They arrived in America on 5 January 1795.

Moving to Philadelphia in 1797, she became acquainted with Fr. Neale, then the pastor of St. Joseph's Church in that city, and under his direction she devoted herself to works of piety and charity with a small group of associates. The group went on to open an academy for the instruction of girls.

Fr. Neale was transferred in 1799 from Philadelphia, to become President of Georgetown College; she and her associates, the widows Mrs. McDermot and Mrs. Sharpe, also went to Georgetown, D.C., and were for a time domiciled with a small community of Poor Clares, exiled from France. Neale purchased a house for Lalor and two companions to open a school of their own, a house which stood within the grounds of the later Georgetown Visitation Monastery, the oldest monastery of the Order in the U.S.

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