Incarnate Word Heritage, Arrival in San Antonio, 1869

After two stormy voyages across the Atlantic and in the Gulf of Mexico, the first group of Incarnate Word Sisters arrived in Galveston in 1866. There, they got further training in caring for the sick at St. Mary’s Hospital, which Bishop Claude Marie Dubuis had built. As word spread of the work of the Sisters, leaders in San Antonio reached out to Bishop Dubuis for help with a yellow fever epidemic in that city. Three Sisters answered that call traveling to San Antonio by stagecoach in 1869 to establish a clinic, Santa Rosa. The Sisters soon faced a new challenge: caring for orphaned children. One of the pioneer Sisters, Mother Pierre Cinquin explained their response to the challenges they faced: “In all of our actions, the glory should be for God, the utility (service) for others, and the trouble for ourselves.”

Sister Margaret Patrice Slattery narrates the Sisters’ arrival to San Antonio.