During Kulturkampf, the sisters were forced to leave Coesfeld, and traveled to the U.S. where they taught in parishes in Ohio and Kentucky and, eventually, in many other locations.
They both attended the Royal Teacher Training Seminar for Women in Munster and began teaching at St. Lambert Parish in Coesfeld, Westphalia.
[1] The parish priest at St. Lambert, Father Theodore Elting, suggested that Wolbring and Kuling establish a religious congregation which would give them a more solid financial economic basis.
The Prussian Government objecting to teachers dependent on foreign authority, the sisters were compelled to sever their relations with the mother-house in Holland and to erect their own at Coesfeld.
[3] In 1855, the Sisters of Notre Dame of Coesfeld became an independent congregation,[4] and on 5 October 1856, Mother Maria Anna, from Munster, Germany, was elected the first superior general.
[1] In 1874, Bishop Richard Gilmour invited Mother Maria Chrystoma (superior general from 1872 to 1895) to send six sisters to Cleveland, Ohio to teach in the parish.
[6] Sister Maria Aloysia, who had been part of the first group to travel to the U.S., died in 1889 and was buried in St Joseph Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio.