U r s u l i n e s
A L I V E
Ursuline Sisters still benefiting from KnottsvilleSt. Lawrence, Ky., connection Ursuline Sisters and Sisters
By Dan Heckel, Mount Saint Joseph Staff
W
hen Sister Margaret Ann Aull told her parents during her senior year of high school that she wanted to enter the Ursuline community, she received only support. “I grew up in a family where the Catholic faith was very important. Going to church was a big part of our lives,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “When I told them that I was thinking of becoming a Sister, they told me they would be very proud to have a daughter who was a Mount Saint Joseph Ursuline.” Sister Margaret Ann (pictured at left) went to St. Lawrence Grade School and St. William High School in nearby Knottsville, two small, but highly Catholic areas on the east side of Daviess County, more than a half hour from Maple Mount. Her teachers at both schools were Ursulines – one of the reasons that 47 women from those two 10
communities eventually became Ursuline Sisters. Today, Sister Margaret Ann is one of six remaining Ursulines from those east county towns, joined by Sisters Marie Joseph Coomes, Rose Karen Johnson, Mary Gerald Payne, Naomi Aull and Marie Montgomery, the community’s oldest member. “The pastor, Father Robert Whelan, talked a lot about religious life to us,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “From a young child, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. Back then, it was only the Sisters who taught in Catholic schools. I knew I wanted to be a Sister.” The Sisters who were most influential to her were Sister Agnes Jean Greenwell, who taught her in the 7th and 8th grades at St. Lawrence School, and Sister Paul Joseph Mattingly, who taught her at St. William High School. The two later ministered together at St. Pius X School in Owensboro. “They always seemed happy and
of Charity stand in front of their convent at St. William School in 1962. Front row, left to right: Sister Isadore Brown, Sister Jamesina Spain, Sister Bernard Anita Flaugher, Sister of Charity Theresa Jane Cecil, Sister Emma Cecilia Busam, Sister Mary Evelyn Duvall and Sister Pierre Brady; Second row, from left: Sister Mary Oderic Settles, Sister James Marie Pfeffer, Sister of Charity Ann Marie Carrico, (an unidentified Sister of Charity), Sister Ann Vincentia Abell and Sister Mary Brigid Fulkerson; Top row, from left: Sister James Alma Bickett, Sister Christina Eckmans, Sister Rosina Hinton, Sister Charles Borromeo Calhoun, Sister Charles Joseph Eberhard, Sister Nazaria Mattingly and Sister Jane Frances Donahue.
prayerful,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “They were good teachers.” When Catholics who had migrated to central Kentucky from Baltimore decided to move farther west, the early ones settled in St. Lawrence, where the first church in Daviess County was built in 1831 by the legendary Father Elisha Durbin. The first St. Lawrence School opened in 1879, led by Franciscan Sisters. In 1889, the growth in the parish resulted in the congregation being split between St. Lawrence and the new St. William Church in Knottsville. That same year, lay public school teachers began at St. Lawrence. In 1912, Father Louis Hilary Spalding, the pastor of St. William, asked the Ursuline Sisters to lead
