Waldron Mercy Academy

Waldron Mercy Academy is a K-8 Catholic private elementary school, sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy and located in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, located in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, USA. The school is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and has twice won National Blue Ribbon School recognition (in 2001 and 2009) by the United States Department of Education.

Catherine McAuley, the Irish foundress of the Sisters of Mercy, and the women who joined her were the driving forces behind establishing learning institutions in the United States.

In 1861, Sister Mary Patricia Waldron, who was 26 at the time, and ten Sisters of Mercy landed in Philadelphia in order to serve the uneducated, poor, and the ailing in the city. Because many of the Sisters became ill themselves while aiding the sick in the city, Waldron bought an eight-acre retreat in Merion for their recovery. In 1885, the adjoining Morgan Estate was purchased. The 13-room stone house became St. Anne Convent, and the farmhouse held the Village School for the local farm children.

The Sisters of Mercy began Mater Misericordiae, an academy for young ladies and boys under 12 years of age, in 1885. In 1923, the male boarding students moved to a new school on the property—Waldron Academy for Boys.

By 1946 the boarders had gone, and Waldron Academy was an all-boys school which was still taught by the Sisters of Mercy. Lay faculty and staff joined the ranks in the 1950s, and soon after Waldron had a preschool, as well as a co-educational Montessori program.

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