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N the year 1826 the Princess Elizabeth de Galitzen, a Russian convert, entered the Society of the Sacred Heart in Paris. Appointed in 1840 to visit the American convents in the name of Mother Barat, she made a brief stay in Louisiana and Missouri, and then, in compliance with Bishop Hughes's request, came northward to found a school in New York. Having opened that establishment, and placed it in the hands of Mother Aloysia Hardey, Madame de Galitzen herself founded the first Pennsylvania convent at McSherrystown, and became its superioress. Thither she transferred the American novitiate, previously located in Florissant, Missouri. The affairs of the order called her to France, and on her return she died of yellow fever in Louisiana. The school of McSherrystown languished, and Reverend Mother Hardey, to whose care had been committed the government of the northeastern province, removed the novitiate to New York and the school to Philadelphia. In 1847 she bought of Mrs. Rebecca Cowperthwaite a beautiful estate, bounded on its forest edge by the old Bristol pike, and on its frontage—giving in those days, an unobstructed view of the Delaware, now partly screened off—by the growing suburb of Torresdale.

Surveyors' deeds drawn up in 1679 by Richard Noble for Laers Laerson and Olaf Coeckel give the property the name of "Pleasant Hill," for it would seem that agreeable associations have always connected themselves with the spot. Before reaching its present destination the place knew many owners, having been successively possessed by the Accords, Whites, Vanboskercks, Thomases, Pattersons, Luffs, Barrys and Cowperthwaites. When purchased by Mothers Hardey and Boilevin it bore the name of Eaton Hill.

At the head of the new convent was placed Mother Elizabeth Tucker, an English lady whose family had never wavered in their 7