Ursuline Sisters and the Louisiana Territory

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On this day in 1803, the U.S. officially took control of the Louisiana Territory.
Napoleon Bonaparte sold it for $15 million.
The land had been held by the French who put a great effort in to instilling French culture in the New World.
Sons of wealthy colonists were sent to France for schooling or taught at home by Capuchin Monks.
But girls could not go to Europe for their education, so the governor asked that six Ursuline Sisters (who believed that "if you educated the mother, you educated the whole family") be sent to attend the hospital and open up a school for girls in New Orleans.
Twelve Sisters arrived in the summer of 1727 and, by year's end, opened the first girls' school in the U.S., the Ursuline Academy of New Orleans.
They also opened the first girls' orphanage, held the first classes for slave and Indian girls and staffed one of the first hospitals in America.
One of the Sisters became the first pharmacist in the Louisiana Territory.