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NE ardent wish inspired the daily prayers of Mother Tucker and her household from 1847 to 1849. The generosity of their friend, Mr. George Edwards, enabled them to accomplish their pious purpose, and on the thirtieth day of October, 1849, Bishop Hughes laid the cornerstone of a little Gothic chapel. Completed and freed from debt, the pretty edifice was, on the 27th of October, 1851, consecrated as a church.

The See of Philadelphia was vacant, Archbishop Kenrick having been promoted to the primacy of Baltimore. The administrator of the diocese suggested that Mother Tucker should invite her kind friend, who had become Archbishop of New York, to complete the work he had begun, and Most Reverend John Hughes, assisted by his guest, Bishop Mers, performed the ceremony with a solemnity of ritual rarely manifested fifty years ago.

The preacher of the day was Father Forbes, a convert of celebrity at a period when converts were rare. Reverend Mother Hardey came from New York to mark the great interest of the order in the possession of a consecrated church, for chapels alone had up to that time been its temples of worship.

Mr. George Edwards and Mr. Robert Ewing had taken the initiative in the line of benefactions, but their example was so promptly followed by other friends of the institution that to their names must be joined those of the Reppliers, Bouviers, Frenayes, Robins, etc. The present exquisite perfection of detail is due to the taste and munificence of Mr. Francis Drexel and of his daughters. Windows, admirable in design and execution, bear witness to the piety of the various benefactors. Nearest the altar, on the Blessed Virgin's side, is a window showing this inscription: "Erected by 69