Bishop Martin John Spalding of the Diocese of Louisville sent Father Leander Streber, OFM, pastor of St. Martin of Tours Church in Louisville, to Bavaria to seek sisters to teach the German children in the diocese.
The congregation was founded in 1858 in Louisville, Kentucky by Mother Salesia Reitmeier, and two others sisters, all Ursulines, from Straubing, Bavaria.
[2] The motherhouse, which had been at the old Ursuline Academy of the Immaculate Conception on East Chestnut Street, moved to Lexington Road in 1877.
[3] Although the sisters' work is primarily in education, in October 1918, fifteen went to nearby Camp Zachary Taylor to serve as nurses during the influenza epidemic.
The Ursuline campus served as a refuge for people displaced by the Ohio River flood of 1937.