Fr. Thomas Casey provided land and some funds for the Sisters of St. Joseph to establish Villa Maria Academy as a nonsectarian Academy to provide young women with a liberal, systematic, thorough, cultural Christian education. The Sisters opened Villa Maria Academy for grades 1-12 in 1892.

In March 1883, the Sisters purchased five acres of land on 26th and Ash Streets from John Gensheimer. Plans were made to erect a building that would be a home for the aged. On September 21, 1884, the Sisters opened Saint Mary’s Old Folks Home in Erie.

In the early 1870s, a man fell and broke his leg in front of the Sister’s Motherhouse. He was brought in and cared for by the Sisters. Soon, the demand for the Sisters’ nursing services became so great that Mother Agnes Spencer sought permission from Bishop Mullen to build a hospital. Construction began on St.…

The orphanage relocated to a larger building on 3rd Street and became the Sisters Motherhouse.

At the request of the Bishop, the Sisters made their way to Erie. On August 15, 1865, the Sisters opened their first mission in Erie on 4th Street. It combined an orphanage, a small hospital named St. Joseph Hospital (later to become Saint Vincent Hospital), and a school. Within five months, the building became too…

On May 24, 1860, at the invitation of Bishop Joshua Young, Mother Agnes came to the Erie Diocese where she assumed the direction of St. Ann’s Academy for Girls in Corsica, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania. She was accompanied by Sisters Protais Duboille, Cesarine Mulvey, and Augustine Spencer (her sister).

Within the space of a few years, Sister Agnes Spencer, one of the first to arrive in the U.S., moved from Carondelet to Philadelphia, PA, to assist at an orphanage; to Wheeling, WV, to direct a hospital; to Canandaigua, NY, to establish a new foundation, and then to Buffalo where she organized St. Mary’s Institute…