While she was a child, the family moved to Opelousas, Louisiana, and she became in (1822) one of the first pupils of the Sacred Heart Convent in Grand Coteau.
[1] Bishop John Dubois having invited the Society to New York in 1840, Mothers Galitzin and Hardey opened the Society's first convent in the Eastern United States on Houston Street in lower Manhattan, later located uptown on Aqueduct Avenue, and now established in Greenwich, Connecticut.
In this capacity, she made ten voyages to Europe, five to Cuba, and constant journeyings, acting either as Mother Provincial or Visitatrix (the office of an outside examiner of community life).
During the American Civil War, with Northern leaders her influence was exerted on behalf of Southern convents and she herself, passing through contending armies, brought aid to the southwestern houses.
Kenwood in Albany, New York, became her residence and the novices' home in 1866 when she erected the buildings which later contained the general novitiate for North America.