History of the Ursulines in New Orleans

The Ursulines have a long history in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.

As early as 1726, King Louis XV of France decided that three Ursuline nuns from Rouen should go to New Orleans to establish a hospital for poor sick people and to provide education for young girls of wealthy families.

Fourteen nuns took part in the long journey to New Orleans. The names of seven are known:

There were two postulant sisters: Sister le Massif from Tours and Marie-Madeleine Hachard from Rouen.

There were also two nuns from Ploërmel and one from Hennebont in Britanny.

Marie-Madeleine Hachard described their travel and their arrival at New Orleans in letters sent to her father who stayed in Rouen, and were published in 1728 by Antoine le Prévost from the same city. The trip lasted for five months, instead of three. They arrived at New Orleans in July 1727, and were temporarily housed in one of the larger houses of the young city.

Convinced that the education of women was essential to the development of a civilized, spiritual, and just society, the Ursuline Sisters influenced culture and learning in New Orleans by providing an exceptional education for girls and women. They founded the Ursuline Academy in 1727. It was the first boarding school in Louisiana, educating a number of Catholic Hispanic girls and women from socially privileged families in central and South American countries. During the War of 1812 the Ursulines turned the classrooms into infirmaries for the sick and wounded of both the British and American armies. It is one of three academies sponsored by the Ursuline Sisters of the Roman Union, Central Province. The Ursulines also began the first school of music in New Orleans.

The Ursulines established an orphanage in the convent and one of the first hospitals in New Orleans. They worked in health care, and treated malaria and yellow fever among the slave population. The hospital usually had from thirty to forty patients, most of them soldiers. The first pharmacist in the United States was an Ursuline woman, Sister Francis Xavier, who practiced in New Orleans in the early 1700s.

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