DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Seven nuns of the Ursuline order made the trip from New Orleans and arrived in Galveston on January 19, 1847 — sent at the request of Bishop Jean Marie Odin. Now, you don't pack up seven women of the cloth and ship them across the Gulf of Mexico unless somebody means serious business, and Bishop Odin clearly did.
Within weeks — by February of that same year — those nuns had set up a convent and academy inside the two-story former home of a man named Judge James W. Love. School opened with 25 students.
Before long, some of those pupils were boarding right there on the grounds. Things were moving. Then Galveston did what Galveston has a long memory for doing.
A hurricane struck in 1853. And as if that weren't enough, yellow fever followed right behind it. The nuns didn't close the doors.
They opened the academy to orphaned children. That tells you something about the character of the place. The frame structure was destroyed by fire in 1854 — gone.
But the nuns obtained funding by subscription and built a brick structure in 1855. Brick, this time. And that facility, too, became a place of refuge after several outbreaks of yellow fever.
Galveston kept testing them, and they kept answering. When the Civil War came, those walls sheltered soldiers nursed by the nuns — from both sides of the conflict. Both sides.
That detail sits quietly in the marker, but it carries weight if you let it. By the 1890s, noted Galveston architect Nicholas J. Clayton designed a new Ursuline Academy.
A massive Gothic structure — the kind of building that makes a statement just by standing there. And it did stand, through storm after storm, offering shelter each time, for decades. Until 1961.
Hurricane Carla damaged the school beyond repair. The massive Gothic structure that had weathered so much finally met something it couldn't outlast. Three years later, in 1964, a new Ursuline Academy was dedicated — and it later became a junior high school campus.
The old Ursuline Convent itself was razed in 1974. Seven nuns. A judge's old house.
Fire, flood, fever, and war. And through all of it, those doors kept opening. That's the site right here.
What the marker says
Seven nuns of the Ursuline order from New Orleans arrived in Galveston on January 19, 1847, sent at the request of Bishop Jean Marie Odin. By February 1847 the nuns established a convent and academy in the two-story former home of Judge James W. Love. The school opened with 25 students. Later some pupils boarded at the school. A hurricane struck Galveston in 1853, followed by a yellow fever epidemic. The nuns opened the academy to orphaned children. The frame structure was destroyed by fire in 1854, and the nuns obtained funding by subscription to build a brick structure in 1855. That facility also became a place of refuge after several outbreaks of yellow fever. During the Civil War, the nuns nursed soldiers from both sides of the conflict there. A new Ursuline Academy was designed by noted Galveston architect Nicholas J. Clayton in the 1890s. The massive Gothic structure provided shelter during many storms until 1961, when hurricane Carla damaged the school beyond repair. In 1964 a new Ursuline Academy was dedicated; It later became a junior high school campus. The old Ursuline Convent was razed in 1974.