Dominican Sisters of Sparkill

The Dominican Congregation of Our Lady of the Rosary, better known as the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, is a institute of Religious Sisters of the Third Order of Saint Dominic based in Sparkill, New York, which was founded in 1876. The congregation developed to care for indigent women but now works primarily in education as well.

The congregation was established through the charitable work of two sisters, Alice Mary and Lucy Thorpe, who had emigrated from England and settled in New York City. They converted from the Anglican Church in which they had been raised to the Catholic Church. Becoming aware of the needs of poor and homeless women in the city, they began to serve their needs.

Eventually the Thorpe sisters resolved to commit themselves more formally to this service by embracing religious life, and they established the congregation on May 6, 1876, under the leadership of Alice Mary, who took the religious name of Mother Catherine M. Antoninus, O.S.D.. She led the congregation for the next twenty years. During this period, the focus of the Sisters' work shifted from caring from adults to childcare, with the opening of St. Joseph Home. In 1884 the Sisters determined to move the children under their care and opened St. Agnes Home for Boys on the grounds of their motherhouse in the rural town of Sparkill. They also opened St. Agatha Home in Nanuet, New York. Both facilities closed in the mid-1970s.

The Sisters also began to work in education, teaching in various parishes of the Archdiocese of New York in which they were based, especially in the Bronx, with its marked development during the 1920s. One example of this work was St. Martin's Academy which they opened in 1900 to serve the children of St. Martin of Tours Parish. When the parish opened its own parochial school in 1922, the Sisters converted the facility into a two-year business school to train young women, who were being offered a new range of careers in the years after World War I. A decade later, the decision was made that providing a good secondary education would be of more help to young women. The existing building was demolished to comply with the demands of the New York Board of Regents and Aquinas High School was opened in September 1939.

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