CLARKE, Mary Frances

Sister Mary Frances Clarke

CLARKE, Mary Frances (Sister) (Dublin, Ireland, Dec. 15, 1802--Dubuque, IA, Dec. 4, 1887). Founder of CLARKE COLLEGE. The first of four children of Cornelius Clarke, a prosperous harness and carriage leather merchant in Dublin, Mary Frances Clarke never said of herself that she had attended more than a "penny school." On December 8, 1831 she joined the Third Order of St. Francis.

During a plague outbreak in 1828, Mary Frances and her friends witnessed the destitution of their countrymen who had been forced off the farmland into the slums of Dublin. The young women decided to bring hope to a desperate situation. They moved into the area and began Miss Clarke's Seminary, a school for girls on North Anne Street. By educating girls, they expanded literacy among the impoverished people. When the graduates became mothers they, in turn, taught their children to read and write.

On August 31, 1833 Sister Clarke immigrated to the United States from Ireland with four others at the request of Patrick Costello, an Irish priest. They arrived in New York and then traveled to Philadelphia where Terence James Donaghoe, pastor of St. Joseph's parish, helped them to become a religious congregation. The sisters soon opened two private schools and taught the children of local parishes. To support themselves while they taught the poor girls of the Irish immigrants, the women did piece-work for a garment factory.

The plea of Dubuque Bishop Mathias LORAS brought the nuns to Dubuque in 1843. Although plans to work with Native Americans never developed, the congregation soon opened schools including St. Mary’s Academy. After the Sisters began the school in a log cabin near the church, they realized that the girls in the rural areas needed to move in with them if they were to receive an education. The Sisters work week expanded to 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week, as they became both teachers and care givers. The lack of convenient transportation in the early days necessitated the establishment of girls’ boarding academies along with parish schools as the pioneers moved westward. This school for girls, later called Mount St. Joseph, moved to the top of Seminary Hill. In 1928 the school was renamed CLARKE COLLEGE in her honor.

In 1846 the motherhouse of the congregation was established on the prairie about eight miles southwest of Dubuque. The sisters expanded their work into many town in Iowa and Wisconsin. In 1867 at the invitation of Arnold Damien, S.J. they traveled to Chicago to teach in the Holy Family Parish.

With the death of Terence Donaghoe in 1860, Mary Frances Clarke had the congregation incorporated and started the process of receiving papal approval. Pope Pius IX issued the Decree of Approbation in 1877 approving the SISTERS OF CHARITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY (BVM) for six years. The Vatican gave final approval of the congregation's constitutions on March 15, 1885. The BVM sisters at that time asked that Clarke be allowed to remain the Superior General for life. That decision the Vatican left to the bishop of Dubuque who approved.

Although Sister Clarke had never had training with an established congregation before founding the BVM, her impact was dramatic. By the time of her death, BVM sisters staffed school in twenty-three Iowa communities and as far away as Wichita, Kansas and San Francisco, California.

Upon her death, Sister Clarke was buried near the first headquarters of the order in an area known as St. Joseph's Prairie. Her remains were moved in 1898. In 1910 they were finally placed in a mausoleum at the MOUNT CARMEL MOTHERHOUSE.

In 1978 Philip Mihalakis, operator of the Ecology Control Corporation scrap yard, discovered a 9- by 12-inch grave marker later identified as that belonging on the original grave of Sister Clarke. The order announced plans to restore the 6.25 pound cast iron plaque for display in the "Heritage Room" at Mount Carmel. Sister Mary Frances Clarke was added to the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame on August 27, 1984.

---

Source:

About Mary Frances Clarke. www.clarke.edu › About Clarke › Mission & History

"Mary Frances Clarke." East Dubuque Local Area History Project. http://www.edbqhs.org/District/LocalAreaHistory/MaryFrancisClarkelah.htm

Hudson, David; Bergman, Marvin; Horton, Loren. The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2008