San Antonio, Texas

Three Sisters, Madeleine, Pierre, and Agnes arrived in San Antonio sometime in April, 1869. Even before leaving Galveston, they received the news that their home and new hospital, still under construction, had burned to the ground. Undeterred, they arrived to what must have been, to them, a shocking place. Gun-toting cowboys roamed the street. Tribes of Comanches often traveled through the surrounding areas. Their thoughts can only be imagined as they caught their first sight of dusty, unpaved, and filth-infested streets, lined with adobe houses, saloons, and rough and ready Texans speaking English and Spanish. To add to their distress, they found that no provision had been made for their arrival. At last, they were given a place to stay with the Ursuline nuns who had come from France to San Antonio in 1851.