Mary Hardey was born in
Piscataway, Maryland, United States. Both her parents (Frederick Hardey and Sarah Spalding) were descended from old
Maryland Catholic families. While she was a child, the family moved to
Opelousas,
Louisiana, and she became in (1822) one of the first pupils of the Sacred Heart Convent in
Grand Coteau. She entered the congregation upon the completion of her studies, at which time she was given the name Sister Mary Aloysia. The young Sister showed such capability that she was placed in charge of the Sisters' convent school in St. Michael, Louisiana and upon her taking
final vows, was made
Superior of the convent. Bishop
John Dubois having invited the Society to New York in 1840, Mothers
Galitzin and Hardey opened the Society's first convent in the Eastern United States on
Houston Street in lower
Manhattan, later located uptown on Aqueduct Avenue, and now established in
Greenwich, Connecticut. A visit to Rome, the blessing of
Pope Gregory XVI, and a sojourn with
Mother Barat in France, prepared Mother Hardey for her future work. The list of thirty convents, of which some are now closed, represents the work of more than forty years (from New York, 1841, to Atlantic City, 1883): Albany (New York), Astoria (New York), Atlantic City (New Jersey), Boston (Massachusetts), Buffalo (New York) -moved to Rochester, Cincinnati (Ohio), Clifton (Cincinnati, Ohio), Detroit (Michigan), Eden Hall (Torresdale, Pennsylvania), Elmhurst (Rhode Island), Grosse Pointe (Michigan), Halifax (Nova Scotia), Havana (Cuba), Kenwood (Albany, New York), London (Ontario), Montreal (Quebec), McSherrystown (Pennsylvania), Manhattanville (New York), New York City (Aqueduct Avenue and Madison Avenue), Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), Providence (Rhode Island), Rochester (New York), Rosecroft (Maryland), Sancti Spiritus (Cuba), Sandwich (Ontario), Sault-au-Recollet (Montreal), Saint Jacques (Quebec), Saint John (New Brunswick), St Vincent (Quebec). She provided twenty-five free schools in the States and Canada. Kenwood in
Albany, New York, became her residence and the novices' home in 1866 when she erected the buildings which later contained the general novitiate for North America. In 1871 she was appointed Assistant
Superior General, an office requiring residence in the general
motherhouse in Paris. She inspected first, as Visitatrix, all convents of the Society in the United States and Canada and embarked for Europe in 1872. She aided the various Superiors General in visitations and foundations of French and Spanish convents, still supervising those of America. She came back to America on her official visits in 1874, 1878, 1882. In 1884 she returned to Paris as member of the general council. She died in Paris on June 17, 1886. She was buried in
Conflans crypt, the tomb of the general administrators. Due to the
anti-clerical hostility of the French government to religious orders at the beginning of the twentieth century (which later resulted in the expulsion of most religious orders in 1904 and the confiscation of their properties), on 12 December 1900, she was re-interred at
Kenwood, Albany. ==References==