St. Mary's Episcopal School

The Martyrs of Memphis were six people with names. Sister Constance, born Caroline Louise Darling in Medway, Massachusetts, in 1846, was sister superior and headmistress of the school. With her died Sisters Thecla, Ruth and Frances, and two priests: Charles Carroll Parsons, a West Point graduate and former artillery officer who was rector of Grace Church, and Louis Schuyler, newly ordained. They stayed to tend the sick at St. Mary's Cathedral, which had become a relief center. The Episcopal Church keeps their feast day on September 9.

What the plaque says

St. Mary's Episcopal School Front: St. Mary's Episcopal School is the oldest private school in Memphis. It has operated continuously since its founding in 1847, and during most of its existence has been exclusively for girls. During the Civil War, Headmistress Mary Foote Pope moved the school, along with many of its students, to Mississippi, to await the end of hostilities. The Sisters of St. Mary's directed the school from 1873 to 1910. Four of them and two priests, known collectively as the "Martyrs of Memphis," died while caring for yellow (Back) fever victims during the 1878 epidemic. As Thomas F. Gailor, Bishop of Tennessee observed in 1901, the school never succumbed to "the mere social veneering which some people call the education of girls." The school was located at Calvary Episcopal Church, and then successively at St. Mary's Cathedral, in a building at 1257 Poplar Avenue, and at Grace-St. Luke's Episcopal Church. It moved to its present location at Church of the Holy Communion in 1953.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Elmwood Cemetery — 6.8 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — 7.0 mi
  A rebuilt Stax studio on the site of the old Capitol Theatre, with a replica of the sloped-floor Studio A, Isaac Hayes's Cadillac and the story of an integrated soul label.
• Sun Studio — 7.3 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• Beale Street — 8.1 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.

More markers nearby

• The University of Memphis — 1.9 mi
• Christian Brothers High School — 2.6 mi
• Tragic Accident Sparks Sanitation Strike — 2.6 mi
• Nashoba — 3.7 mi