Teresa, Mother (c. 1766–1846)

Irish-born American religious leader and educator. Born Alice Lalor around 1766 in Ballyragget, County Kilkenny, Ireland (some sources cite County Queens, now County Laois); died on September 9, 1846, in Georgetown, District of Columbia; migrated to the United States, 1790s.

Established the oldest surviving school for girls in the original 13 colonies; founded the first Visitation convent in the United States, Georgetown, District of Columbia (1808).

Alice Lalor was born in Ireland about 1766. A deeply religious child, she wanted to join a community of Presentation nuns in Kilkenny but was dissuaded by her parents. Instead, she migrated to the United States with her elder sister in 1795 and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Befriended on the journey by two widowed passengers, a Mrs. Sharpe and a Mrs. McDermott, Lalor established a religious community with them, guided by Father Leonard Neale, who assisted the three in founding a school for girls under the auspices of a religious order called the Pious Ladies. During a yellow fever epidemic in 1797 and 1798, Lalor and the others remained in the area to care for the sick. Although Lalor survived the epidemic, the two widows died.

When Neale accepted an appointment as the president of Georgetown College (now Georgetown University) in the District of Columbia in 1799, he invited Lalor and other Pious Ladies to join him in Georgetown. There, in 1804 or 1805, he acquired the deed to a convent abandoned by a community of Poor Clares. The Pious Ladies established a second school in Georgetown, and Lalor assumed title to the convent property in 1808. She embraced the lifestyle of the Visitation nuns of the Catholic Church and formally established the first American community of that order under the sanction of the pope. The community increased in numbers so much that by 1816 Lalor had assumed the position of the first mother superior of the cloister, after which she became known as Mother Teresa. Lalor held that position until 1819 and then resumed her work in relative anonymity. By the time of her death in 1846, the Visitation order in the United States had grown to include five convents throughout the country.

sources:

Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Appleton, 1888.

McHenry, Robert, ed. Famous American Women. NY: Dover, 1980.

Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans. Boston, MA: The Biographical Society, 1904.

Gloria Cooksey , freelance writer, Sacramento, California