• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

University of Portland Museum

  • Home
  • About
  • This Day
    • The Bells Are Ringing
    • Library Dedication, 1958
    • Gute Reisen
    • Veteran’s Day
    • Fire on Campus
    • Engineering Building
    • Outbreak of World War I
  • Featured
    • Campus Archaeology: On the Shoulders of Giants
    • The Walls Came Tumbling Down
    • Broken Wall Memorial is Broken
    • 2nd Century: Second Wave
    • Retiring Faculty
      • 2019 Retiring Faculty
      • 2018 Retiring Faculty
      • 2017 Retiring Faculty
      • 2016 Retiring Faculty
      • 2015 Retiring Faculty
      • 2014 Retiring Faculty
    • TGIF all-class
    • No frogs were hurt in this demonstration
    • Orientation at the UP Campus
    • Upsilon Omega Pi Hearse
  • In the Beginning
    • Rev. John A. Zahm, CSC: Name-dropper, Promise Keeper
    • Cornerstone West Hall
    • Founder’s Day
    • Another Day
    • Day One
  • UP Trivia
    • NCAA or NAIA, First Nat’l Title Revisited
    • Medal of the Year
    • Hanging Up the Pads
    • Football
    • Cannons on the Bluff
    • Pilots on the Bluff
    • Columbia Prep, 1901-1955
    • Hours and Bases
    • domainname.com
    • Wally Pilot
    • 50 Years: A-Meh-zing Mehling
    • Broken Wall Memorial
  • Exhibits
    • Museum Photo Gallery
    • Football on the Bluff: 1902-1950
    • Mago Hunt Center 40th Anniversary
    • Salzburg Study Abroad
    • Museum Display in Buckley Center
  • People
    • Memorials
      • Rev. Claude Pomerleau, C.S.C., 1938-2019
      • Dr. Arthur Schulte, Jr., 1928-2018
      • Dr. Art Schulte: A Life on the Bluff
      • Brian Doyle, 1956–2017
      • Rev. Charles David Sherrer, C.S.C.,1935–2017
      • Rev. Ronald Wasowski, C.S.C., 1946–2016
      • Dr. James Covert, 1932-2016
      • Dr. Manuel Macias, 1929-2016
      • Dr. Kate Regan, 1959-2014
      • Martha Wachsmuth: 1921-2015
      • Rev. Tom Oddo, 1944-1989
      • Dr. David Alexander, 1957-2013
    • A Given Life
      • The Pioneer Four
      • Flowering in the Rose City
      • Rev. Richard Berg, C.S.C.
      • Rev. John Molter, C.S.C.
      • Sisters of Mary of the Presentation
      • Holy Cross Leadership
      • Rev. John Delaunay, C.S.C.
      • Holy Cross at UP
      • Sr. Angela Hoffman, O.S.B.
      • Rev. Art Schoenfeldt, C.S.C.
      • Rev. George Dum, C.S.C.
      • Rev. Maurice Rigley, C.S.C.
  • Recent Posts
    • National Scar-tissue, November 22, 1963
    • Nurses are Superheroes
    • Lamp of Learning
    • Sangfroid: Poised and Professional, after December 7, 1941
    • Five Months in 1945
    • Women’s First: Engineering
    • Taste of UP for Families
    • Prophecy and Visions
    • The Bells Are Ringing
  • Campaign Trail
    • President Ronald Reagan, 1984
    • Robert F. Kennedy, 1968
    • Nelson Rockefeller, 1964
    • John F. Kennedy, 1960
    • Harold Stassen, 1952

A Given Life: Out of Exile

March 26, 2015 By Carolyn

Sisters of St. Mary of the Presentation, Arrival around 1903 (University Archives photo, click for full image)
Sisters of St. Mary of the Presentation, Arrival around 1903 (University Archives photo, click for full image)

For those in religious life, their life is not their own and they are often transported to areas or parts of the world where culture and language are not familiar.   Consider the journey of these religious sisters.  The Sisters of Mary of the Presentation were exiled from France in 1901 when an anticlerical government enacted legislation to weaken the influence of the Catholic Church in France.  Though just passing through, Rev. John A. Zahm, C.S.C., learned of the Sisters’ situation from the Holy Cross superior general in France, and Fr. Zahm offered the sisters employment at Holy Cross institutions in the United States, including the University of Portland.

Sisters of St. Mary of the Presentation in front of St. Mary's Convent, ca1930 (University Archives photo, click for full image)
Sisters of St. Mary of the Presentation in front of St. Mary’s Convent, ca1930 (University Archives photo, click for full image)

Thus Fr.  Zahm, arranged the Sisters’ travel and personally met the first contingent of Presentation Sisters in New York in June 1903.  Then from New York to Notre Dame.  Three sisters remained at Notre Dame while twelve traveled to Portland and the new University beginning there.   The sisters resided temporarily in West Hall until the construction of a Convent was complete.  The three-story convent building (with a porch) was semi-secluded, located in a grove of trees at a spot that today is green-lawn inside the Academic Quad — west of St. Mary’s and the Chapel of Christ the Teacher, north of the Commons.  The St. Mary’s Convent was meant to serve as a residence for the Sisters while also accommodating a small school for small boys (a plan which never materialized).  Instead, the children’s wing became the student infirmary.

The Sisters served the teachers and students through duties variously exercised in the kitchen, dining room, laundry, infirmary, and poultry yard.   Their wages in 1903: annual payment of only 300 francs, thus in American terms, about $58 a year, including room and board.  Jim Covert writes about the Sisters in A Point of Pride— “Various views have been recorded about their cooking.  Some claimed the meals were exceedingly frugal and the diet too frugal, but others took delight at their tables, especially praising the pastry”.    Brother David Martin, C.S.C., arriving at UP in 1928, recalled how “the waxed floor of their recreation room would always stay spick-and-span [because] they moved around in this room by skating along on small pieces of carpet when they needed to go from one part of the room to another. . . .  Despite their constant work they never seemed to get sick.  I asked them about this once or twice to which they responded that they didn’t have time to get sick.”

The Presentation Sisters (a rotating membership, renewed beyond the original twelve?) remained on the Bluff until 1940 when they were recalled by their religious community.

St. Mary's Convent, ca1940 (University Archives photo, click to enlarge image)
St. Mary’s Convent, ca1940 (University Archives photo, click to enlarge image)
Back of St. Mary's Convent, 1944 (University Archives photo, Click to enlarge image)
Back of St. Mary’s Convent, 1944 (University Archives photo, Click to enlarge image)

Sources:
Presentation Sisters in Holy Cross Apostolates 1903-1963 by Brother Franklin Cullen, C.S.C., p. 1-4

Rev. Barry Hagan, C.S.C. recollections

Filed Under: A Given Life

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to this site via email


Highlights from the Museum

UP vs St Marys football 1939, UP beats nationally ranked team in upset

Hours and Location

University of Portland Museum
014 Shipstad Hall

Available only by e-email at:  museum@up.edu

Recent Posts

  • A Canopy of Blossoms
  • PilotsGive 2021: Preserve our Past and Support our Future
  • Spirit of Portland U Pennant
  • From the University Bulletin, themes of mission and value
  • Battling Germs
  • On the Bluff: looking out, looking up
  • Tonsillectomy Bag
  • A Given Life: Entwined with Learning

Archives

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright © 2021 · University of Portland