Sister - Olympaide - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

Sister Olympaide, one of the noted teachers of St. Mary’s-of-the-Woods, is dead. Many Crawfordsville young ladies have been under her interest. For fifty three years her benevolence and genial amiability was familiar to all. She was born in France in November, 1806. her father was a soldier under Napoleon. She was among the first six, with Mother Theodora at their head, who volunteered to leave their convent home in Brittany and establish St. Mary’s-of-the-Woods. They reached Terre Haute in October, 1840. Sister Olympaide had studied medicine at Orleans, and her coming was a God-send to the settlers in the Wabash Valley. She not only prepared medicine for the pupils and inmates of the school, but also for the community, and she was an angel of goodness to scores of homes in that sparsely settled region. She watched St. Mary’s grow from the humble cabin of 1840 to its present magnificent proportions. Yesterday her remains were buried beside Mother Theodora in the little cemetery attached to the institution. -s