Sisters of the Incarnate Word

The sisters who came in 1871 belonged to an order founded in Lyons, France, in 1625. A party of them reached Galveston on June 29, 1852, spent months learning English and Spanish, and opened a school at Brownsville in 1853. Bishop Dubuis recruited more, and the order grew into independent Texas houses. The Handbook of Texas names Sister M. Ignatius McKeon of Brownsville, with three sisters from Victoria, as the Corpus Christi founders on March 19, 1871. Their convents here and in Brownsville sheltered women religious fleeing persecution in Mexico.

What the plaque says

Sisters of the Incarnate Word In 1871 the Brownsville congregation of the Incarnate Word, at the request of Bishop Claude Dubuis, sent four sisters to Corpus Christi. They moved into a run-down adobe building at Leopard and Carancahua Street. H.L. Kinney had given the site to the church for a convent and school. Immediately the sisters recognized the need for a Spanish-speaking teacher. They expanded the staff and opened the convent and school to boarders. Under the direction of Father Claude Jaillet, Vicar General, a 3-story structure was completed in 1885. The sisters paid for it with their 10-year savings. The school secured academic accreditation from the State of Texas in 1885 and by 1890 had 220 pupils. The cloister was dissolved in 1915, giving the sisters more freedom to open new schools and improve their education. In 1922 a new, more modern convent was completed at the original location. The Corpus Christi and Brownsville houses united in 1932 and moved the motherhouse to Corpus Christi. The convent at this site was dedicated in 1950. The sisters' contributions to education in south Texas include operation of a junior college from 1958 to 1966, two high schools, three junior highs, ten elementary schools and a pre-school with an experimental program. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 2.4 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 3.3 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 3.6 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 3.7 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Moses Menger Elementary School — 0.5 mi
• Camp Scurry — 0.5 mi
• First Baptist Church of Corpus Christi — 0.6 mi
• Alta Vista Hotel, Site of — 0.8 mi