GOING, GOING, GONE:  NUNS

(Source of picture: Florida State Archives)

This undated Jacksonville photo depicts a Catholic nun at St. Mary's Home, an orphanage for girls.

A nun, Sister Mary Ann, founded St. Mary's in 1886, making it Florida's first child care institution.  Five motherless girls were the inaugural residents.  St. Mary's operated as a home for kids until 1952.  It was long located in a three-story downtown building that dated from 1902, a year after Jacksonville's Great Fire destroyed one of the orphanage's earlier structures.  (In fact, a new chapel had just been completed at the facility the day of the conflagration.)  St. Mary's stood on the southeast corner of Ocean and Church streets, behind the Church of the Immaculate Conception.  The spot of the institution is now a parking lot. 

The orphanage contained a beautiful little chapel that served as the scene for many weddings for former St. Mary's girls.  Some of the other orphanage's other residents, though, followed in the footsteps of the nuns who staffed the facility.

Sister Mary Ann had been born in Ireland in 1828.  She came to America in 1848 after fleeing the infamous Irish potato famine.   Sister Mary Ann served at St. Mary's for many years before passing away in 1914.
 

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