Mother Magdalen and the Sisters of Loretto (1852-1968)

The panel names four who arrived; six set out. Leaving Kentucky in June 1852 with Bishop Lamy, the party met cholera on the way west: Mother Matilda Mills died at Independence, and Sister Monica Bailey fell too ill to go on and turned back. Magdalen Hayden, sick herself, recovered, and Lamy made her superior. He taught them Spanish on the trail. Their first pupils that November were two orphan girls. The chapel they raised is known for its spiral stair, credited by legend to a vanishing carpenter and by recent research to the French joiner François-Jean Rochas.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Mother Magdalen and the Sisters of Loretto (1852-1968) Four Sisters of Loretto, Mother Magdalen Hayden and Sisters Roberta Brown, Rosana Dant and Catherine Mahoney, arrived in Santa Fe from Kentucky on September 26, 1852. In January 1853 they established Our Lady of Light Academy, later known as Loretto, the first school for young women in the Territory of New Mexico. Official Scenic Historic Marker Mother Magdalen and the Sisters of Loretto (1852-1968) Between 1863 and 1879 the Sisters with the help of local people raised funds to build the Loretto Chapel. During the next century, hundreds of women, many of them of Hispanic heritage, joined the Sisters of Loretto. Lucia Perea became the first native- born New Mexican superior at Loretto, Santa Fe in 1896.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Palace of the Governors — steps away
  The long adobe on the north side of the Santa Fe plaza, called the oldest public building in continuous use in the country, though its own founding date is in dispute.
• Pecos National Historical Park — 17 mi
  The red walls of a 1717 mission church inside the foundations of a far larger one, beside the kiva Pecos people dug in front of the old church during the revolt of 1680.
• Bandelier National Monument — 20 mi
  Rooms carved into soft volcanic tuff in Frijoles Canyon, named for a Swiss scholar who was led there in 1880 by a man from Cochiti Pueblo.
• El Santuario de Chimayó — 22 mi
  A small adobe shrine on the High Road to Taos, built around 1816 over earth that pilgrims still carry away in hope of healing.

More markers nearby

• Dorothy Scarritt McKibbin — steps away
• Myra Ellen Jenkins — steps away
• Doña Teresa de Aguilera y Roche — steps away
• Inez Bushner Gill (1918-1982) and Maralyn Budke (1936-2010) — steps away