McGroarty, Sister Julia

▪ American religious leader

original name  Susan McGroarty  

born Feb. 13, 1827, Inver, County Donegal, Ire.

died Nov. 12, 1901, Peabody, Mass., U.S.

      Irish-born American religious leader and educator, the first American superior in the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, whose efforts increased the scope and quality of Roman Catholic education in the United States.

      Susan McGroarty immigrated with her family to the United States in 1831. She was educated in the convent school of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1846 she entered the order. She soon took the habit as Sister Julia, and she made her final vows in 1848. She conducted the convent's day school for six years, and in 1854 she was sent to the new Academy of Notre Dame in Roxbury (now part of Boston), Massachusetts, as mistress of boarders. In 1860 she became the first American superior in the Belgian-based order when she took charge of the academy in Philadelphia. In addition to the regular school, attended largely by the daughters of the well-to-do, Sister Julia also conducted a night school for the children of the poor and from 1877 to 1882 a school for African American children.

      In 1885 she was called back to Cincinnati to serve as assistant to Sister Superior Louise Van der Schrieck, and on the latter's death in 1886 Sister Julia succeeded as superior of the order's American houses east of the Rocky Mountains. In her 15 years as superior she founded 14 new convents, a large novitiate in Waltham, Massachusetts, and an orphanage in San Jose, California. She was deeply concerned with the quality of instruction offered in the order's 30-odd academies, and she wrote a standardized course of instruction and devised a system of common general examinations.

      The lack of higher-education facilities for Roman Catholic women prompted a number of lay and ecclesiastical leaders to prevail upon Sister Julia to establish a new institution. To that end Sister Julia established Trinity College in Washington, D.C. The college was formally incorporated in 1897 and opened its doors in 1900.

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