Sister Zoe Krzysostan Historians and genealogists often work to recreate peoples’ lives based on information they find in various types of records. This can be difficult, however, when records for a particular person are few and far between. This is the case for Sister Zoe Krzysostan. Her personnel file provides dates of major events in her life, but it doesn’t...Read more

St. Joseph’s Orphanage, New York The School Sisters of Notre Dame operated St. Joseph’s Orphanage, located in Yorkville, a neighborhood of Manhattan’s Upper East Side from 1859 until it closed in 1918. The sisters who worked at the orphanage went to great lengths to provide a clean, safe home for the children who lived there. Unfortunately, some things were beyond...Read more

St. Joseph’s orphanage, New York Construction has a way of uncovering historical gems that were thought to be lost. Recently, a parking lot was torn down in Yorkville, a neighborhood in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Hidden behind the structure was the eight-story neoclassical façade of the St. Joseph’s Orphanage chapel, which was built in 1898 (see links below for more...Read more

Many parts of the United States and Canada are currently in the grips of a polar vortex. This means people living in the affected areas are experiencing arctic temperatures and large amounts of snow. Since no one does cold weather better than Canadians, let’s “celebrate” the polar vortex with photos of students from Notre Dame Academy and candidates from Notre...Read more

The following excerpt taken from the chronicles of Villa Notre Dame (former motherhouse for Wilton Province) shows that the sisters in Wilton had a great sense of humor when dealing with an intrusive squirrel: “[December 1991, Provincial House] Of course, Richard (a maintenance worker) really dug them out of the wall after cutting a piece of the wall out. The sisters...Read more

Innermost By Sister Maura Eichner, SSND On the eve of hope, come, let us be silent as joy, certain as change, here before this Christmas tree. Tassels of wind hang secretly among berries and fruit and winter sun that warmed the boughs of this tree. Ghosts of butterflies delicately shadow a branch, melt like snow in the intimate dark of...Read more

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, which was a difficult period for the School Sisters of Notre Dame in North America and Europe, but for very different reasons. The School Sisters of Notre Dame was founded in Bavaria in 1833. The motherhouse for the Congregation was located in Munich and German was the...Read more

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 1918 Spanish flu, the deadliest pandemic in human history. Over the course of the pandemic, an estimated one-third of the world’s population was infected, and anywhere from 20 to 100 million people were killed by the disease. Death rates were particularly high amongst otherwise healthy adults ages 20-40. In fact, the disease...Read more

St. Michael At 5 a.m. of Oct. 9, the sisters at St. Michael’s gathered in the Chapel for Mass. The priest arrived “very much excited and in a fearful state.” He told the sisters that they were in danger if the winds turned directly north. He did not say Mass, but distributed Holy Communion to the sisters and left carrying...Read more

SSND and the Great Chicago Fire, Part I On the night of Oct. 8, 1871, a fire was started in the O’Leary barn on Chicago’s west side. The fire quickly spread and by the morning of October 10, roughly one-third of the city lay in ruins. The fire destroyed almost 18,000 buildings, left 100,000 people homeless and caused the death...Read more