Catherine Spalding

Mother Catherine Spalding
Bronze statue of Mother Catherine Spalding by Raymond Graf in front of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville, Kentucky
Foundress and Educator
Born	(1793-12-23)December 23, 1793 Charles County, Maryland
Died	March 20, 1858(1858-03-20) (aged 64) Louisville, Kentucky

Catherine Spalding (December 23, 1793 – March 20, 1858), in 1813, aged nineteen, was elected leader of six women forming a new religious community, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, at a time when no education for girls, private health care, or organized social services existed on the Kentucky frontier. On January 6, 2003, the Louisville Courier-Journal named her the one woman among sixteen "most influential people in Louisville/Jefferson County history."

Catherine Spalding was born on December 23, 1793 in Charles County, Maryland. At the age of three, her family moved to Nelson County, Kentucky. Her mother died shortly thereafter. Her father incurred heavy debts and deserted both financial obligations and his family. Her aunt and uncle, Thomas and Elizabeth Spalding Elder, raised the five Spalding children with ten children of their own. At sixteen, Catherine went to live with her cousins, Richard and Clementina Elder Clark for three years until she joined the newly founded Sisters of Charity of Nazareth (SCN). From the Elders and the Clarks, Catherine gained a stable home life, religious faith, the skills for pioneer homemaking and health care, and the basics of education. She also developed a passion to care for other children orphaned by death or desertion,

Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget of Bardstown, Kentucky and Father John Baptist David saw the need for persons to provide education to the thousand plus Catholic families and their children who had moved to Kentucky from Maryland after the Revolutionary War. Both Sulpicians, they were aware of the school established by Mother Seton near the Sulpician seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and hoped to do the same in Kentucky.

Father David consulted with Father Bruté, advisor to Mother Seton, in beginning a community of women that would educate girls and young women on the Kentucky frontier. In 1812, he sought volunteers to begin a religious order to serve the pioneers in Kentucky. In January 1813, nineteen-year-old Catherine, accompanied by her uncle, arrived at St. Thomas Seminary farm in Nelson County, Kentucky to join twenty-four-year-old Teresa Carrico, and Elizabeth Wells, aged 36. Father David gave the women the rule of St. Vincent de Paul as followed in Emmitsburg.