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The Sisters of the Visitation arrived in Wheeling, Virginia in 1848. For the past 161 years, they have taught, nursed and comforted people around the upper Ohio Valley, from Irish immigrants in the 1850s, to wounded soldiers, to my own parents in their last months.
Faced with an aging, rapidly deteriorating convent and their own declining numbrrs and health, the remaining five Sisters will be leaving for the order's Georgetown convent soon.:
No one is sure whether the big 1865 building can or will survive. From the order's website:
"The Bishop’s fondest hope was to have an academy the proportions of which would resemble those he knew of in the East, especially Georgetown and Baltimore. He persuaded the sisters to approve of his plans to build a first-class academy on property they would purchase about three miles from the city. It would be healthier in the country and presumably there wouldn’t be all that coal dust to contend with. The Bishop, acting as the banker for his parishioners, used their money for construction costs with the intention that the first couple of years' tuition would repay him, and he could return the money to his people and all would be well. Too many things were against that scenario: they began to build when the Civil War started; the architect ran off with the plans and some of the money; construction and materials quadrupled in cost because of the War and the enrollment was so small when the building was ready for the scholars that it looked like the Bishop would be disgraced unless somehow money was obtained to pay back his parishioners. ..."
The sisters read about an act of generosity by Boss Tweed and secured a grant from him. Things at the Mount were interesting ever after, and Wheeling will be poorer now that these dear ladies are leaving.
Faced with an aging, rapidly deteriorating convent and their own declining numbrrs and health, the remaining five Sisters will be leaving for the order's Georgetown convent soon.:
No one is sure whether the big 1865 building can or will survive. From the order's website:
"The Bishop’s fondest hope was to have an academy the proportions of which would resemble those he knew of in the East, especially Georgetown and Baltimore. He persuaded the sisters to approve of his plans to build a first-class academy on property they would purchase about three miles from the city. It would be healthier in the country and presumably there wouldn’t be all that coal dust to contend with. The Bishop, acting as the banker for his parishioners, used their money for construction costs with the intention that the first couple of years' tuition would repay him, and he could return the money to his people and all would be well. Too many things were against that scenario: they began to build when the Civil War started; the architect ran off with the plans and some of the money; construction and materials quadrupled in cost because of the War and the enrollment was so small when the building was ready for the scholars that it looked like the Bishop would be disgraced unless somehow money was obtained to pay back his parishioners. ..."
The sisters read about an act of generosity by Boss Tweed and secured a grant from him. Things at the Mount were interesting ever after, and Wheeling will be poorer now that these dear ladies are leaving.
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