The nuns of the Dominican
Second Order, had been founded by St.
Dominic de Guzman in 1206 as an
enclosed religious order. At the start of the 19th century, the German monasteries of the Order which had survived the
Protestant Reformation were ordered by
Prince-Bishop Karl Theodore von Dahlberg to provide free public education. With this expertise already established in their way of life, in 1853 four
choir nuns, accompanied by two
lay Sisters, volunteered to go to America from their Monastery of the Holy Cross (founded in 1233) in
Regensburg,
Bavaria, in order to minister to the needs of the German immigrants then pouring into that nation. Settling in
Brooklyn,
New York, the nuns accepted girls as students whom they taught within their
cloister. They flourished and established small monastic communities around the region where they taught in the parishes of the
Diocese of Brooklyn and the
Archdiocese of New York. In 1877, the nuns responded to an invitation by
Caspar Henry Borgess, the
Bishop of Detroit, to provide education to the children of his diocese. Six nuns of the community left for Michigan, where they settled in
Traverse City in October of that year. The success of the community in New York was repeated in Michigan, and small groups of nuns were quickly established throughout the state, where they taught children in tiny monasteries, their living quarters often doubling as classrooms. By 1885 the numbers of Dominican nuns in Michigan had grown to such an extent that they were organized into
St. Joseph Province, with Holy Angels Convent in Traverse City serving as the Provincial
Motherhouse. This community served the
Native American population of the region. The nuns became independent of New York in 1894 and were established as the Congregation of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. The General Motherhouse of the new congregation was located in Grand Rapids. Two years later, the nuns were reorganized by the
Holy See as a congregation of Religious Sisters of the
Third Order of St. Dominic, no longer being restricted to a monastic enclosure. ==Schools==