Mary Xavier Mehegan

Mother Mary Xavier Mehegan, S.C., founded the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth and opened New Jersey's first four-year college for women.

She was born Catherine Mehegan in Ireland in 1825, one of the ten children of Patrick Mehegan and Joanna Miles. Along with a sister, Margaret, she emigrated to the United States in 1842, settling in New York City. In 1846 she joined the Sisters of Charity there, who had been founded by Mother (now Saint) Elizabeth Bayley Seton in Maryland. A native of New York, in 1817 Seton sent sisters from the motherhouse in Emmitsburg, Maryland, to her native city. Taking the name by which she is now known, Mehegan joined the congregation and took her annual religious vows for the first time on 25 March 1847.

In 1853 James Roosevelt Bayley became the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Newark, with the Pro-Cathedral of St. Patrick serving as its seat. The nephew of Mother Seton, he immediately invited the community established by his aunt in nearby New York City to take charge of an orphanage run by St. Patrick's parish. Sister Mary Xavier Mehegan and Sister Mary Catherine Nevin were sent by their superiors to take up this work.

The two Sisters took up residence at the Orphan Asylum of St. Patrick in early 1854. Later that year, they encountered a resurgence of anti-Catholic prejudice when, on 5 September 1854, a march through the city was held by 3,000 members of the Orange Order. After reports of the other Catholic church of the city being broken into and looted, the Sisters took the orphans and locked themselves in the cathedral, where they spent the night. Later the Sisters also began to teach in the parish school, a service which they carried out until its closing in 1975.

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