In 1727, twelve nuns left France to establish a community of Ursuline nuns in New Orleans, the capital of the French colony of Louisiana. Their convent was the first in the territory that would eventually be part of the United States. Notable for establishing a school that educated all free girls, regardless of social rank, the Ursulines also ran an orphanage, administered the colony's military hospital, and sustained an aggressive program of catechesis among the enslaved population of colonial Louisiana that contributed to the development of a large, active Afro-Catholic congregation in New Orleans. In Voices from an Early American Convent, Emily Clark extends the boundaries of early American women's history through the firsthand accounts of these remarkable French missionaries, in particular Marie Madeleine Hachard." "The heart of the volume consists of letters that Hachard wrote to her father in Rouen describing the physical and emotional ordeal of crossing the Atlantic, the startling combination of strangeness and familiarity of Louisiana, and the exhilaration of participating in a unique missionary adventure. Biographies of pioneering Ursulines, written as obituaries by the nuns who survived them, add to the missionaries' story. Clark also includes a contemporary account of the festive procession the nuns made through New Orleans in 1734 to their newly constructed convent compound. These fascinating documents reveal early American women of determination, courage, and conviction, who left behind the traditional roles of wife and mother to embrace lives of public service. From within their cloister they made an indelible impact on the lives of early colonists."--BOOK JACKET.