History of Georgetown Visitation
Making Georgetown Visitation
IN 1799, Father Leonard Neale (later Bishop and Archbishop), President of Georgetown College (later University), invited "three pious ladies" from Philadelphia — Alice Lalor, Maria McDermott, and Maria Sharpe—to found a school for young women. With little more than faith and determination, they accepted his challenge and opened a school in a simple one-room house. Now one of the oldest Catholic girls’ schools in the nation, Visitation has grown and flourished for more than 225 years.
The school opened near Georgetown College (now University) because its fourth President, Father Leonard Neale, S.J. (later Bishop and Archbishop) co-founded the Academy and Convent. He invited Alice Lalor, whom he had known in Philadelphia, and soon after, Maria McDermott and Maria Sharpe, to run the school. These founders would come to be called “The Three Pious Ladies.”
These painted copies from originals at the first Visitation house in Annecy, France portray St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal. Father Michael Wheeler brought them back to Georgetown after a visit to Annecy in 1829. Collection of Georgetown Visitation.
When Father Neale completed his tenure as President in 1806, he moved to a house on the Convent grounds and brought with him George, a man he held in slavery. While residing on the Convent grounds, Neale purchased more enslaved people, including Stace and another man named George, as discussed further below. As they determined the nature of the religious community they would found, Neale and the "Three Pious Ladies” discerned that the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary fit their needs. Founded in 1610 in Annecy, France, by St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal, this cloistered order valued contemplative life but required no severe asceticism.
The founding Sisters were drawn to the work of these saints for their liberty of spirit, optimism, simplicity, and common-sense approach to life. When Father Neale’ became Archbishop of Baltimore in 1815, they were able to communicate directly with Rome. The following year the Pope granted permission to form the first Visitation house in the Americas.
Although enrollment records in the nascent Academy are scant, there seems to have been sixteen paying students by 1820. In 1826, enrollment had increased to forty-eight, and by this time leadership had changed. Father Joseph-Pierre Picot de Clorivière had become chaplain in 1819. A French royalist and nobleman whose parents had been put to death during the French Revolution, Clorivière had been part of a conspiracy to kill Napoleon. He volunteered in the year 1800 to give the signal to detonate an explosive his co-conspirators had placed near the path of Napoleon’s carriage. When this assassination plot failed, Clorivière fled to the southern United States, and in 1812, he was ordained as a Jesuit priest. Upon arrival at Georgetown in 1819, he donated his family inheritance to the Visitation Convent and Academy. Using these funds and his considerable architectural expertise, he oversaw the design and construction of four buildings in eight years. His accomplishments from 1819 until his death in 1826 have earned him the unofficial title of Georgetown Visitation’s “second founder.”
The 1827 Academy prospectus signed by Father Wheeler confirms that students were examined in geography, history, mythology, astronomy, chemistry, French, Spanish, and vocal and instrumental music. This prospectus must have been co-written with the young and ambitious new directress of the academy appointed the previous year, Sister Ann Gertrude Wightt. It was she who established the annual public examinations in the Odeon, at which several U.S. presidents distributed student awards during the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1829, Sister Gertrude oversaw the construction of a new dormitory to accommodate increasing enrollment. This required the acquisition of additional lots of land along what is now P Street, and expanding campus beyond a one-block radius.
Though Rome had recognized the Georgetown Visitation Order in 1816, it was on May 24, 1828, that the Sisters were incorporated by Congress, an act signed by President John Quincy Adams. Just a few months later, Adams came to the Academy to distribute awards at the annual commencement exercises. In 1838, increasing enrollment prompted the West Academy’s construction, which provided additional classrooms, a dining room, and the Playroom, which is still used today by juniors as their common space. This new building, which was constructed adjacent to the 1829 dormitory and 1819 infirmary, formed the head of a line of structures called Gallerie, named for the first Visitation house in Annecy, France.
Around this time, prominent families began sending their daughters to the school. In 1830, the great granddaughter of Martha Washington, Britannia Wellington Peter (later Kennon), graduated. The niece and ward of James Buchanan, Harriet Lane (later Johnston), graduated in 1848; she would go on to become First Lady when her bachelor uncle became U.S. President James Buchanan in 1857.
Georgetown Visitation is in the process of digitizing its historical records pertaining to enslaved people and making them available in the GV Digital History of Enslaved People Archive.
Primary sources held by the National Archives and by the Georgetown Visitation Monastery Archives contain information on manumissions and self-emancipations. On April 16, 1862, the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act freed over 3,100 individuals in the federal district, including twelve people over whom the Sisters of the Visitation held a claim.
The law provided for financial compensation to enslavers for the people whom they had enslaved. The Sisters of the Visitation filed a petition seeking compensation for twelve people whom they had claimed as their property before Emancipation—nine members of the Tilghman family and three men: Thomas Weldon, Joseph Dixon, and Benjamin Mahoney. Government records show that Ignatius Tilghman responded by filing a counter-petition, citing his 1856 agreement with the Visitation Sisters, in which he was to buy his and his family’s freedom for $500. He argued that the Sisters should not be compensated for the amount that he had already paid toward his family’s freedom. The Sisters vigorously contested his counterclaim. While the Convent was not allotted the exact amount that Ignatius Tilghman had paid them when the government eventually compensated the Sisters in 1864, no records suggest that Ignatius Tilghman was compensated instead for any of the money that he had paid toward his and his family’s freedom.
Following emancipation, Ignatius and his wife, Susan Tilghman, and their seven living children lived in the District of Columbia for about 20 years until some of them moved to Philadelphia around 1900. Others formerly enslaved by the Convent took different paths. Benjamin Mahoney served in the Navy during the Civil War, eventually becoming ill, after which he was discharged, possibly dying shortly thereafter. Thomas Weldon and Joseph Dixon both married and raised their families in Southern Maryland.
Despite oral tradition at Georgetown Visitation that the Sisters taught enslaved children to read, no written records have been found to substantiate this. In fact, federal census records indicate that many people formerly enslaved by Visitation were illiterate. Of the fourteen people freed between 1853 and 1862, data cannot be found for two; another two were too young to be taught; six were recorded as illiterate; and documentary evidence for the other four is inconclusive. These records suggest that people enslaved at Visitation at that time had not been taught to read or write.
Another oral tradition referred to a “slave cabin” behind today’s tennis courts. This name, which can be traced to the late 1930s when segregation was still legal, was used in Visitation’s 1969 filing with the Historic American Buildings Registry. The moniker suggested that enslaved people lived in the cabin. No records that tell how the structure was used on Visitation’s campus have been found. It was built in the late eighteenth century by the Threlkeld family, potentially as a dairy for processing milk. In the late 1940s, it was refurbished into a recreational field house and became the site for the annual student Marshmallow Roast during Founders Day celebrations. For decades, the casual use of this misnomer caused many students and others in the Visitation community great discomfort. It was particularly harmful to Visitation’s Black students.
In 1872, the Sisters commissioned from Philadelphian architect Norris G. Starkweather a late Victorian, Italianate, four-story building with mansard detailing on its top level to serve as the main Academy building. This building became an iconic component of the school's identity.
In addition to Sister Paulina Finn, several other Sisters entered religious life after obtaining advanced degrees. In 1882, Sister Regina Toomey entered with a degree from the State Normal and Teaching School of New York. In 1885, Sister Mary Baptista Linton produced an award-winning educational system for teaching history, called the Linton Century Charts, and authored several historical texts to accompany it.
It was around this time that the cemetery in the southwest corner of the Convent garden reached capacity, so a “New Cemetery” was platted in 1887. In 1891, the Sisters built a wash house with a state-of-the-art industrial laundry machine. This building now houses the Senior Lodge. In 1895, the Convent added a large, two-story brick barn for keeping livestock and horses, which was renovated in the late 1950s into St. Bernard Library.
During the late 1920s and 1930s classes competed by staging theatrical performances, usually a Shakespeare play. And perhaps it is this regular contest that transformed into the tradition of Marshmallow Roast, which can be documented as early as 1913. Eventually students started writing original productions, and it later changed into a “roast,” with skits that good-naturedly teased faculty and staff. It is a fitting tradition at a Salesian school as eutrapela is a little virtue linked to helping others and ourselves remain humble through poking fun in order to help people be comfortable with their idiosyncrasies. Indeed, in his Introduction to the Devout Life, St. Francis de Sales, says that, "By them we take an honest and friendly recreation from such frivolous occasions as human imperfections furnish us with."
In 1937, Visitation’s other beloved tradition, an athletic house-based competition called Gold-White, was developed by the Athletic Association, which had been founded in 1917. This was in part because the campus had a new gymnasium, which had been built during the Great Depression in 1935. After this time, athletics became increasingly important as part of extracurricular offerings.
The Junior College had thrived at a time when women sought higher levels of education, and the Sisters had responded to that demand. But in the 1960s, women had more choices than ever. So, because of waning enrollment, rising costs of operating two schools, and a shortage of religious personnel, the Junior College was closed in 1964.
By the mid-sixties, the school started seeing a decline in the number of resident students, so the boarding school was closed in 1975. This was a difficult decision made when Sister Mary Berchmans Hannan, VHM, '48 & '50 was Headmistress.
Sister Mary Berchmans had initially come to Visitation as a 14-year-old to join the sophomore class, graduating in 1948, and from the Junior College in 1950. She entered the Monastery the next year, professing in 1952. She taught Visitation students Latin and religion for many years. She became headmistress of the school in 1969, serving in that role for 20 years, and later as president for the next 17.
By 1979, the student body numbered 372. The faculty of 39 counted eight Sisters in its ranks, along with a curriculum director, a registrar, a guidance counselor, and a college counselor. One of many beloved and inspired teachers was Sister Mary de Sales McNabb '48. She developed innovative courses in science and computers and served as Mother Superior at the Monastery from 1984 to 1990, and again from 1996 to 2002.
Enrollment steadily increased, and in 1986 Daniel Kerns Jr. became assistant head of school and academic dean. Three years later he was appointed head of school, the first lay leader, and Sister Mary Berchmans Hannan took the newly formed position of president.
In 1988, the Salesian Network was formed as a way of naming and explaining Visitation charism, which the Sisters had always shared by example. In acknowledgement of the fact that lay faculty and staff were the school’s future, the next year began with a fundraising effort, the Century III Endowment Fund, for faculty enrichment and salaries, as well as student scholarships.
Dr. Barbara McGraw Edmondson and Sister Mary Berchmans Hannan, VHM, '48 & '50, at Dr. Edmondson's installation as head of school.
A campus redesign moved a parking lot from between the gym and Founders Hall to behind the Lodge. This re-claimed green quadrangle was bordered by the 1935 gym, renovated into The Catherine E. Nolan Performing Arts Center, along with the newly built Sarah and Charles T. Fisher Athletic Center. The two buildings were completed in October 1998 and dedicated at a kickoff celebration for the bicentennial, with many events during that academic year to acknowledge Visitation’s two hundredth anniversary.
The year of 1934 had brought the first lay woman to teach an academic subject. Now all faculty members are laypeople. Some have PhDs. Many are alumnae, teaching in ways they learned from the Sisters. The model of laypeople leading continued with Mary Kate Blaine becoming school principal in 2013. A fundraising campaign, which began that fall, enriched the school’s endowment, funded a new turf surface for McNabb Field in 2014, renovated the Sheehy Dining Room in 2016, and, that same year, established the St. Jane de Chantal Salesian Center.
These donations also funded two new buildings in 2019. Berchmans Hall, named for Sister Mary Berchmans Hannan, VHM, ’48 & ’50, is a two-story addition to St. Joseph Hall with classrooms, science labs, and an art studio. The covered walkway between St. Bernard Library and St. Joseph Hall became the Saints Connector, with common areas and an innovation lab - the McNabb Lab, named for Sister Mary de Sales McNabb ‘48. These interconnected buildings that honor these long-serving Sisters span three centuries from 1895 to 2019.
After 30 years serving the school, Daniel Kerns Jr. retired from his position as head of school in the spring of 2019, having seen over 3,200 students graduate. Dr. Barbara McGraw Edmondson started in July 2019 as head of school. The women and men working today at Georgetown Visitation stand on the shoulders of the institution’s founders and the many Visitation Sisters, who have lived, prayed, and taught on this same piece of land under every U.S. president except George Washington.