History
Our Dominican congregation began in thirteenth-century Europe with the vision and work of Dominic de Guzman and with Holy Cross Convent, a Dominican cloister for women religious founded by Jordan of Saxony, in Regensburg, Bavaria.
In 1853, four cloistered Dominican nuns left Regensburg and went to New York to minister to German immigrants. Settling in Brooklyn and New York City, these consecrated women responded to calls for religious teachers. Today, twelve independent Dominican Congregations in the United States trace their origins to the original Regensburg mission.
Peninsula of Promise
Answering a call for teachers in Michigan, six nuns arrived in Traverse City in October 1877. One week later, the nuns opened a school in their small wood-framed home. Six students appeared, and two months there were fifty students. Some would be Michigan’s first candidates to the Dominican order.
Additional missions were established throughout the state. In less than two decades the Dominican Sisters establish a parochial school system that flourished throughout the state for the next century.
By 1885 all the Dominican Sisters in Michigan were organized into St. Joseph Province with Holy Angels Convent, Traverse City, as Provincial House and Novitiate.
The Dominican Sisters came to Grand Rapids in 1888 to administer the newly-founded St. John’s Home which was a diocesan institution for the care of orphans. Through this new ministry, social work and health care were added to the ministries the Sisters provided.
In 1894, the Dominican Sisters became an independent congregation under the patronage of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. In 1896, they were authorized to change from cloistered nuns to Sisters with an active contemplative status.