Dominican Sisters Congregation of the Sacred Heart
At the request of Galveston Bishop Nicholas Aloysius Gallagher, Dominican Sister Mary Agnes Magevney and Mother Rose Lynch left their Sacred Heart Convent in Somerset, Ohio, to staff a school in Galveston in 1882. Twenty sisters including Sister Agnes and Mother Rose arrived in Galveston on September 29, 1882. Horse-drawn carriages brought them from the railroad station to a 2-story home here owned by St. Mary's Cathedral. They established a convent and opened Sacred Heart Academy on October 9, 1882.
Mother Agnes died in 1891 and was succeeded in the office of Superior of Sacred Heart by Mother Pauline Gannon. Severe damage to the Sacred Heart Convent in the storm of 1900 eventually resulted in its relocation to the Adoue Home at 16th and Postoffice in 1927. A new Sacred Heart Academy, known as the Dominican High School, was built at the corner of Postoffice and 15th in 1940. A school for girls operated there until 1968, when the house was leased to O'Connell High School, created by a merger of the Kirwin High School for Boys and the Ursuline and dominican School for Girls. The Dominican Sisters moved to a new convent in 1974. They presently serve numerous dioceses and archdioceses in Texas, California, and Guatemala.