Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021
Sisters Clara, Mechtildis, and Adelaide from the Benedictine Convent of St. Joseph at St. Mary, Pennsylvania arrived in Shakopee in 1862.
The sisters, with ecclesiastical approval, founded the Convent and Academy, according to Julius Coller in The Shakopee Story.
In a letter to King Ludwig of Bavaria on December 2, 1862, Abbott Boniface Wimmer noted that he founded a little mission for the Sisters “to the great joy of the English and German Catholics.
“The new convent has its own story. First, it was a cow shed, then a horse barn, and now it is an embryo of a woman’s convent, but it only serves, in any event, only the most necessary purposes.”
The sisters erected a large two and a half-story limestone building at the corner of Fourth and Atwood Street, south of St. Mark’s Church.
St. Gertrude’s Convent and Academy by the Sisters of St. Benedict was incorporated on May 4, 1866, said Edward D. Neill in History of the Minnesota Valley including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota.
The first commencement exercises of St. Gertrude’s Convent and Academy took place on June 20, 1871.
On September 4, 1871, the academy had an enrollment of 46 young ladies.
The board and tuition for the season cost $40.00. Bedding and laundry was $5.00, piano lessons were $8.00, and guitar lessons were $3.00. Lessons in cloth, wax works, and paper flower making were extra.
Mother Gertrude Flynn was the prioress. She was admired, and she put the convent and academy in firm financial foundation. By mid-1878, the debt of St. Gertrude Convent and Academy was practically paid off.
Father Alois Plut, pastor of St. Mark’s and intensely German, decided in 1878 to refuse to re-employ the Benedictine Sisters as teachers at St. Mark’s School because he contended that they were unable to teach German properly. Father Plut and the sisters had a mutual antagonism that developed.
At one point, Father Plut refused, for a time, to give the nuns pews in the church.
At this time there were thirty sisters staffing the academy, convent, and three schools in Minneapolis, Carver, and Belle Plaine, and the orphanage in St. Paul.
Father Plut replaced the Benedictine Sisters with the School Sisters of Notre Dame from Milwaukee in May 1878.
On August 31, 1880, Bishop Ireland advised the sisters that St. Gertrude’s was suppressed, and the thirty sisters needed to join St. Benedict’s Convent in St. Joseph, Minnesota or be dispensed from their vows.
Sister Gertrude Flynn, OSB, and the other sisters who had come originally from St. Mary’s Pennsylvania moved reluctantly to St. Joseph. The merger of this English-speaking community introduced other nationalities that enhanced St. Benedict’s community and provided it with a group of zealous religious whose professional experience assisted in meeting the demands of its academy and other apostolates, according to the Saint Benedict’s Monastery Archives.
According to a letter to Bishop Ireland, Abbott Alexius Edlebrock of St. John’s Monastery noted: “They believe they were wrong, and in my own impression is that they were wronged.”
Bibliography
Coller, Julius A. II. The Shakopee Story. Shakopee Heritage Society, 2009.
Neill, Edward D. and Charles S. Bryant. History of the Minnesota Valley, including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota and History of the Sioux Massacre, 1882.
Saint Benedict’s Monastery Archives. College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph, MN.