Founding James Nicholas Joubert was born in France, and working in
Saint-Domingue (Haiti). During the violence of the Revolution, he fled as a refugee to the United States. Arriving in
Baltimore, he entered St. Mary's Seminary to become a
Sulpician priest. After his ordination, Father Joubert was given charge of the black French-speaking Catholics of St. Mary's chapel, who were primarily also from Saint-Domingue. Finding he was making no headway, as the children were having trouble reading and learning their catechism, he decided to found a school to educate these children in French. He was encouraged by his two friends, Fathers Babade and Tessier. The sisters opened other Catholic schools for African-American girls in the city, in addition to teaching adult women in evening classes, and opening a home for widows. The organization did not consider "previous condition of servitude a liability for Oblate membership". Eight of the forty women who joined the order in the antebellum years (1828–1860) had formerly been enslaved.
Expansion In 1871 the sisters vacated the motherhouse on Richmond Street because the city needed the property. A new location was found on a knoll on what was then the outskirts of the city, and a new motherhouse was built on Chase Street. The sisters continued to operate an orphanage, and a day and boarding school within the convent walls. In 1900 the Oblates opened their first foreign mission, in
Havana, Cuba. The OSPs established seven missions in Cuba but left in 1961 when the regime of
Fidel Castro made it impossible for them to continue their work. In 1903 they opened a convent and school on
Old Providence Island in the western Caribbean. Due to extremely harsh conditions, the mission closed after fifteen months. By 1910 the sisters conducted schools and orphanages at
Baltimore,
Washington state,
Leavenworth, Kansas, and
St. Louis and Normandy, Missouri.
Bill and Camille Cosby donations In 2005,
Camille Cosby (wife of
Bill Cosby), an alumna of a school in Washington run by the Oblates, made a donation to the St Frances Academy to create an endowment to pay the tuition of 16 students a year. The Cosbys made another donation in 2012 to assist St. Frances Academy in building a community center in East Baltimore. The community center was originally named after both Camille and her husband, but his name was removed after the revelation of multiple sexual offenses by him. ==Charism==