[2] In 1696, the congregation was founded by Louis Chauvet,[1][3] the parish priest of Levesville-la-Chenard, a little French village, and Marie-Anne de Tilly, a young woman from a noble family.

In 1708 the small community of sister was entrusted to the Bishop of Chartres, Paul Godet des Marais.

The congregation was dispersed under the Terror, during the French Revolution, but was restored by Napoleon I,[4] who gave the sisters a monastery at Chartres, which originally belonged to the Jacobins, from which they became known as "les Sœurs de St. Jacques".

By 1902 they had over two hundred and fifty houses in France where, besides various kinds of schools, they undertook asylums for the blind, the aged, and the insane, hospitals, dispensaries, and crèches.

By 1913, more than one hundred and sixty of these schools had been closed, also thirty of the hospitals, military and civil, in the French colonies, three convents at Blois and a hospice at Brie.