Daughters’ presence to end in Buffalo
Nardin founders first arrived in 1857
The Daughters of the Heart of Mary, founders of Nardin Academy, will soon mark the end of an era in Buffalo.
The congregation of women religious’ last two Buffalo residents are leaving the area, likely by the end this month.
For the first time since Ernestine Nardin herself arrived in Buffalo 152 years ago, no Daughters will reside here regularly.
“This move closes a long chapter in the lives of Daughters of the Heart of Mary and the students, faculty and staff of Nardin Academy,” Clare A. Thompson, provincial of the Daughters, said in a letter to Nardin board members.
Dozens of the Daughters, commonly known as DHMs, used to occupy the top floor of the Cleveland Avenue academy. But more recently, just two women in the international order have been living in Buffalo, and within a few weeks they also will be leaving for other locales.
Jennifer Fonseca and Theresa Pasquarello will take on new assignments outside of Buffalo. Fonseca, a native of India, served as a campus minister at Nardin, and Pasquarello was a Eucharistic minister at Sisters Hospital.
Nardin President Marsha Joy Sullivan emphasized that the order’s dedication to the school is not changing.
Six Daughters will continue to serve on Nardin’s board of trustees, comprising a third of the full board.
“The Daughters are not leaving Nardin Academy,” said Sullivan, who last year was appointed the first president in the school’s history who is not a Daughter of the Heart of Mary. “Their commitment to Nardin remains as it always was.”
Nardin will keep the West Ferry Street mansion where the Buffalo Daughters lived after the third floor of the girls high school was converted for academic use more than a decade ago.
DHM board members will use the residence at least four or five times a year during visits for Nardin board meetings.
In her letter, Thompson said the most important goal for Nardin Academy is still for the school to maintain a “Catholic identity.”
“The formal academic education of the children must be secondary to their primary education in morality,” she said.
The first colony of DHMs, five women, arrived in Buffalo from Cleveland at the request of Bishop John Timon on Sept. 2, 1857. Three days later, an announcement was made in St. Patrick Church on Seneca Street that the Daughters would open a new school the next day, and on Sept. 6, the school was opened, albeit without any tables or benches, according to a Buffalo history of the Daughters.
The DHMs ran or staffed schools in various parts of Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and in 1889, they broke ground on a new building on Cleveland Avenue for St. Mary’s Academy, more popularly called Miss Nardin’s Academy. The name was officially changed to Miss Nardin’s Academy in 1917.
Unlike most religious orders of women, the Daughters preferred the title “Miss” as opposed to “Sister.” It dates back to the order’s founding in revolutionary- era France, when DHMs sought to fit in as much as possible to avoid political retribution. They also historically have avoided wearing habits.
The academy — which now consists of a girls high school, a co-ed elementary school and a Montessori program — has grown to an enrollment of 926 students, making it the largest independent school in Western New York.
“In the ’60s, there were as many as 40 or 50 women who lived in community in Buffalo,” Sullivan said. “Many of the women who joined the order were from Buffalo families.”
Until 1980, Nardin’s board consisted entirely of DHMs, but as with most religious orders, diminishing membership has forced the congregation to cut back on participation in some of its ministries.
In the United States, the Daughters continue to maintain community houses in Chicago, St. Paul, Minn.; St. Louis, the Bronx, Holyoke, Mass., and Plattsburgh. Other DHMs also live outside of community houses in various states.
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