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628 they bade farewell to their relatives and friends, and on the 20th of November, took possession of their new convent. Mine. Hardey profited so well by the training she received and made such progress in humility and self-renunciation that her period of noviceship was abridged, and she was admitted to her first vows, March, 1827. May, 1827, Mme. Matilda Hamilton, assistant superior of the School of St. Michael died. Like Mme. Hardey to whom she was related, Mme. Hamilton sprang from one of those English Catholic families who sought liberty on the shores of the Chesapeake. Her father left Maryland in 1810 for upper Louisiana. In those days the advantages of education in this part of the world were very great. After taking her first vows, Mme. Hamilton was sent to Cateau and later accompanied Mother Audi to St. Michael, where her death occurred. In 1832, the Convent of St. Michael counted two hundred inmates. In the spring of 1832, the Asiatic cholera appeared for the first time in America, having been carried to Quebec. The pestilence turned southward, advancing with the current of the Mississippi, along whose borders it mowed down thousands of victims. During the next spring the contagion swept over Louisiana, and the Convent of St. Michael was included in its destructive course. Mme. Audi and Mme. Aloysia Hardey stood valiantly by this little community and remained at their post of duty. After Mother Hardey's service as superior at this convent, she was appointed superior of the Convent of New York. Her work in Louisiana was the beginning of a long and eventful career in labors for the church in various institutions which were established throughout the country. She assisted in the foundation of orders in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Buffalo, New York. In 1846, she established a convent in Philadelphia. In 1847, she purchased the Cowperthwaite estate, ten miles from Philadelphia, and established a school known as Eden Hall, and confided it to