On January 6, 2003, the Louisville Courier-Journal named Spalding as the only woman among sixteen "most influential people in Louisville/Jefferson County history.

At age 16, Catherine Spalding moved in with her cousins, Richard and Clementina Elder Clark, living there for three years.

According to Spalding, the Elders and Clarks provided her with a stable home life, a religious faith, the skills for pioneer homemaking and health care, and the basics of education.

She also developed a passion to care for other children orphaned by death or desertion,[1] After the end of the American Revolution in 1783, over 1,000 Catholic families moved to Kentucky from Maryland.

Two of the local religious leaders, Benedict Flaget, the Bishop of Bardstown, and John Baptist David realized that these families needed schools and teachers for their children.

[2] In 1812, David sought volunteers to begin a women's religious community in Kentucky to serve the Catholic children of the region.

In January 1813, the 19-year-old Spalding, accompanied by her uncle, arrived at St. Thomas Seminary farm in Nelson County, Kentucky, to join with Teresa Carrico and Elizabeth Wells in establishing the new religious community.

While Carrico had very little education and no apparent aptitude for teaching, her farming, cooking, and housekeeping skills enabled the community to thrive.

As superior of the orphanage—"the only place on earth to which my heart clings"—she accepted hundreds of children, directed Sisters and lay assistants, collaborated with professional men and their wives.

Other Sisters collaborated with her council, and numerous clergy and lay persons worked to establish the three main ministries that Kentuckians lacked.

The other Sisters did not want the merger and Spalding believed that a distant administrator in Maryland would hinder their work in Kentucky.

SCN is now an international religious order that cares for the sick, poor, and orphaned; and advocates for social justice in five nations in North America, Asia, and Africa.