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St. Mary's Church and School
Behind the Capitol and the Cultural Complex, Sewall Street runs parallel to State Street and crosses Western Avenue. Follow this to St. Mary's Parochial School, which sits on Sewall Street, at the intersection of Western Avenue. St. Mary's Catholic Church is adjacent to the school, a short distance up Western Avenue. The convent for the Sisters of Mercy is just beyond the school on Sewall Street.

The Sisters of Mercy at St. Mary's School have been teaching Augusta children since 1913. Early on, all teachers in the school were Sisters in the Order, but in recent years the majority are lay teachers. The presence of the Catholic Church in Augusta dates to 1611 when the French Jesuit missionary Father Biard came to hold services for the Abenaki. In 1646, Jesuit missionary Father Gabriel Druillette, from Canada, established the Mission of the Assumption on the banks of the Kennebec at Gilley's Point (out Bangor Street to Riverside Drive), which is said to have been the first Catholic chapel in New England. The mission closed in 1652. By the early nineteenth century, the Catholics in Augusta, who were predominantly Irish, practiced their faith through association with parishes in Damariscotta and Whitefield, the location of the first Maine Catholic church. From 1836 to 1846 the Catholics occupied the Bethlehem Church (at Cony and Stone streets), then built a church on State Street in 1846. The present-day church, at the corner of Sewall Street and Western Avenue, was completed and dedicated in 1927. St. Mary's school was the first parish school in Kennebec County, established in 1913, and the Sisters of Mercy taught from the beginning. The importance area parents place on a parochial education remains high and the school is at maximum capacity, with a waiting list. The student body today is 270 (pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade) with a staff of twenty. Sister Theresa Conlogue, a teacher for over 40 years, and Sister Barbara Brennan, principal, are the two remaining Sisters at the school.

 

Site 22.1 Sources:

 

Augusta, Maine Sesquicentennial. Special reprint of Daily Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine, Sesquicentennial Edition, Wednesday, July 30, 1947.

 

Faith Communities of Augusta, Maine - Past and Present. A City Bicentennial Project under the auspices of the Augusta Clergy Association, 1997.

 

Conlogue, Sister Theresa. Interview by Phyllis vonHerrlich, 5 April 2001, at St. Mary's School, Augusta, Maine.

 

North, James W. The History of Augusta Maine. Somesworth, NH: New England History Press, 1981. New forward by Edwin A. Churchill. Originally published in 1870 by Clapp and North of Augusta, ME.

 

St. Mary's School Alumni Herald. A publication of St. Mary's School, Augusta, Maine, Summer 1995.

 

 
The University of Maine