Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word

The Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word is the name of two Roman Catholic religious institutes based in the U.S. state of Texas.

The Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, Houston is a religious institute of women begun in 1866, at the request of French-born Claude Marie Dubuis, the second Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Galveston, which then included the entire state of Texas.

Texas was suffering from the ravages of the Civil War, coupled with the tragedy of a rapidly spreading cholera epidemic.

In 1866, Dubuis contacted his friend Angelique Hiver, Superioress of the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament in Lyons, France.

The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio is the largest group of religious women in Texas.

In 1869, Bishop Dubuis chose three from the Galveston community, St. Madeleine Chollet, St. Pierre Cinquin, and Agnes Buisson to begin a new house in San Antonio and open the first hospital in the area.

In 1870, Dubuis erected this new community as an independent centre, on the occasion of vesting the first postulants admitted into the San Antonio novitiate.

[3] Madeleine Chollet, Pierre Cinquin and Agnes Buisson came to help the people of San Antonio who were being ravaged by a severe cholera epidemic.

Previous to 1874, the sisters had been solely occupied in caring for the sick, the aged, and orphans, but following the counsel of Anthony Dominic Pellicer, first bishop of San Antonio, they began to engage in educational work.

The full force of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was not felt until the next day, September 8, and began to erode away the sand dunes that surrounded St. Mary's Orphanage.

All ten sisters and ninety children perished; only the three teenage boys survived: William Murney, Frank Madera and Albert Campbell.