Westward Bound - From New York to San Francisco

“On the 29th of May 1921, it being the Sunday within the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi, five choir sisters - Mother Mary of the Rosary, Very Reverend Mother Prioress, Mother Mary Emmanuel, Reverend Mother Subprioress, Mother Mary of the Immaculate Heart, Sister Mary Agnes, and Sister Mary of the Visitation - two lay sisters - Sister Mary Rose and Sister Mary Thomas - and Sister Mary Benedict, touriere and natural sister of Sister Mary Rose, set out to found in San Francisco a new monastery with perpetual exposition and adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament…”

Monastery Chronicles - Archives
Corpus Christi Monastery, Menlo Park, California

Though our foundation date is May 29, 1921, the day our foundresses left their monastery in New York for California, the first record of the possibility of making a foundation in California goes all the way back to a letter dated March 26, 1906, written by Minnie Parrott of San Mateo, California to her cousin Julia, known in the Order as Mother Mary of Jesus, O.P., a nun at Corpus Christi Monastery in Hunt’s Point (Bronx), New York:

It was only on Saturday that I saw Archbishop Riordan, and obtained his views with regard to your making a foundation in San Francisco, for the present his responsibilities are all that he can meet, but he asked me to beg you to write directly to him, making thus a direct application…

Unfortunately, on April 18, 1906, less than a month after this letter was written, disaster struck San Francisco - a major earthquake followed by fire, which destroyed much of the city and left it reeling. A new monastic foundation would have to wait for the time being.

In December 1907, Father Arthur Laurence McMahon, O.P. arrived in San Francisco. A friar of the Eastern Dominican Province, he was appointed as vicar general for the congregation of Dominican friars on the West Coast. In 1912, when the congregation was elevated to a province, he was named the first prior provincial of the Western Dominican Province. In a letter from him to our foundress, Mother Mary of the Rosary, O.P. in 1928, he summarized what happened between his arrival in San Francisco in 1907 and October 1916 concerning the possibility of a new foundation of Dominican nuns:

Very Rev. Arthur Laurence McMahon, O.P., S.T.M. - Dominicana 27:3 — Fall 1942

Dear Mother Mary of the Rosary,

With this I shall hand you, to be copied for your archives, the letters that I received from Rev. Mother Mary of Mercy from November 1916 to May 1921…

I have refreshed my memory by reading the correspondence. One of my most earnest desires and purposes when I came to the west, at the end of December 1907, was to make a foundation in Seattle and to make it in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. In less than a year all arrangements for the foundation were made…

It may have been in the first year 1908, or perhaps it was in 1909 - I think it was in the former, that I had thought of a foundation of our Nuns devoted to perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. My mind was filled with a purpose of doing all I could to honor our Lord in the Eucharist, of promoting devotion to the Blessed Sacrament of thus making reparation for the neglect and failings of the Congregation of California and bring blessings upon it..

There was an annual Eucharistic Conference in October 1916 where a paper on devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was read and discussed. Archbishop Hanna who presided mentioned that he had hoped that in the city or diocese there would be a community of nuns who would keep perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Father McMahon seized the opportunity to have the Dominican nuns come to the Bay Area. He had a discussion with the Newark Community and was referred to the Hunt’s Point community.

In the correspondence that began in 1916, it is clear that the Dominican nuns of Hunt’s Point were willing to begin a new foundation in San Francisco, and Archbishop Hanna and Father McMahon were eager to have them, but there was the problem of housing and economic support. The local church was still burdened with rebuilding and assisting those in need after the earthquake and fire and any new foundation would be required to have their own benefactors and prospects for being financially independent of the local church.

Yet, Divine Providence always makes way to see His will accomplished, and eventually the nuns did receive the support they needed from their friend, a kind San Francisco woman, who knew the community at Hunt’s Point from her visits to New York. In a letter dated July 8, 1920, she wrote to Mother Mary of Mercy:

I do wish your community could come here - some months ago, a friend of mine who had been in Europe spoke of having heard that perpetual adoration might be brought here and established in the lower part of San Francisco where there is nothing Catholic to attract the many stenographers, etc.

Caricature of Most Rev. Edward J. Hanna, D. D., Archbishop of San Francisco by G. A. Bronstrup - Bronstrup, G. A., and Associates (1918) Club Men in Caricature, San Francisco, Public Domain

A letter to Mother Mary of Mercy from Father McMahon, also in September 1920:

You have received the Archbishop’s letter, and so you know that you may come and make the foundation that has been so long desired. I had hoped that we might have it for the seventh centenary of the confirmation of the Order, earlier hopes having been in vain; but it seems to have been reserved for the seventh centenary of the death of Saint Dominic.

Our Founding Community of Eight

When a young woman enters a cloister, it is for the purpose of devoting herself solely to seeking the face of God within a hidden life. As a Dominican nun, she does this not only for God’s glory and her own salvation, but also as part of the Order’s mission of saving souls. In their "fiat” to God’s will, during the short months leading up to May 29, 1921, the nuns of Corpus Christi Monastery finished with haste the many preparations necessary for this small group to leave their cloister in New York and head west by train to begin a new foundation in what must have seemed like almost another world.

What are some of the joys, challenges and heartaches these women consecrated to God faced as they took this step of faith and devotion? During our Centennial Jubilee year, we will be sharing with you more of the historical treasures in our archives about our own foundation and the early years of our monastery.