Louis Florent Gillet, CSsR, and Mother Theresa Maxis Duchemin, a co-founder of the Oblate Sister of Providence.

The beginnings of the institute came about in 1845 shortly after Father Louis Florent Gillet, C.Ss.R., arrived in Monroe, Michigan, to become the pastor of St. Mary Parish.

On November 10, Gillet and Theresa Maxis Duchemin, a biracial member of the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore, established the institute in Monroe.

The co-foundress and first religious superior of the Monroe community was Mother Theresa Maxis Duchemin, one of the first members of Oblate Sisters of Providence of Baltimore.

On January 15, 1846, the first St. Mary Academy in Monroe opened with 40 students.In 1858, the sisters established a mission to serve the German-speaking Catholic children of Pennsylvania, at the request of the Bishop of Philadelphia, the now-sainted John Neumann.

Shortly after this, in 1859, the Sisters in that state separated from the community in Michigan and were established as an independent congregation under the Bishop of Philadelphia.

There the college would have a larger field of influence and could offer a Catholic higher education to thousands of young women who might otherwise not have such an opportunity.

In 1948, the Michigan congregation began its first missionary work outside the continental United States when the Sisters opened a mission in Cayey, Puerto Rico.

It would scare white people away from their ministries... before the 1980s, novices didn't even learn about Duchemin in formation... At one point, they even enlisted a cardinal to intervene in the publication of a book that might have outed them as having been co-founded by a black woman.