By Ruth Ann Ruiz
The Post Newspaper Features Editor
Photos Courtesy of Archives Collected by Thomasine Allen
Her voice was smooth and easy to listen to. I didn’t want to hurry her, and I didn’t want the chat to end. Former students of Holy Rosary School in Galveston spoke so fondly of her, and after my brief conversation with her, I understood why.
Irenaeus Oliver Jordan had been the first lay teacher at Holy Rosary School.
“The father asked me if I would teach kindergarten, and I only had a couple hours of college classes, and I had never been in a classroom to teach, but I had been a student at Holy Rosary School, and I was given the guidebooks. There were 62 students on my first day, and most of them had never been inside a classroom. But the parents were very supportive, and we made it through the first year.” said Jordan, the lilt in her voice giving her words a musical quality. “I did it, and I fell in love with teaching.”
Jordan talked about her time spent with the nuns as they prepared lessons for their students, and she remembered the convent and how it was designed so that the nuns went through a corridor to the school. This corridor kept them inside for most of the day. Spending most of their time indoors was part of how they lived their religious vows.
The nuns who taught with Jordan at Holy Rosary were from the Holy Family Sisters of New Orleans. Like Jordan, they were Black women teaching Black children at an all-Black school.
During Jordan’s years as a teacher, the convent and school faced Avenue N on a lot between 30th and 31st Streets in Galveston at that time the new church had been built which faced 31st street.
The school and convent are gone, but the memories of being children walking down the hallways and sitting under the instruction of nuns are vivid for many students who were educated at Holy Rosary School.
Holy Rosary School existed before Holy Rosary Parish. Under the direction of Bishop Nicholas A. Gallagher, the school was founded by the Dominican Sisters in 1886. It was first housed in a small cottage on the corner of 12th Street and Avenue N in Galveston.
The school grew quickly, and a new building was needed.
The new school was built on Avenue I and 25th street. After the storm of 1900, the building was moved to Avenue N between 30th and 31st streets and for a brief time, a Black Catholic High School also was part of Holy Rosary Parish.
Seeing the first lay teacher at Holy Rosary was a special experience for the students, who were accustomed to seeing nuns dressed in their habits. Their new teacher wore the same uniform as the female students at the school.
Jordan very fondly recalls teaching kindergarten and second grade at Holy Rosary. She taught for seven years there before starting a family of her own. With the support of her husband, Jordan completed both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree and went on to teach in the public schools.
Though no longer teaching at Holy Rosary, she continued to be an active parishioner and to serve as a pioneering leader.
Jordan’s devotion to her faith and her leadership were recognized by Bishop Guillory and Bishop Fiorenza, who selected her to represent the Diocese of Galveston-Houston as an official delegate to the National Black Catholic Congress held in New Orleans.
Another pioneering role she held was that of lector.
“It was after Vatican II, when laypeople, both male and female, were allowed to read the epistles,” Jordan said. “The priest or deacon read the Gospels. That’s when I jumped at the chance because they were taking men and women, and that was very unusual for the Catholic Church.”
Just like other parishioners, Jordan describes her relationship with the people of Holy Rosary as being very enduring, supportive and caring.
Though she cannot make it to 9 a.m. Mass at this time in her life, she does stay connected with her lifelong love of Holy Rosary by occasionally attending noon Mass at Galveston’s St. Mary’s Cathedral Basilica during the week. There she enjoys conversations with people she knows and with the Rev. Jude Ezuma, pastor of the parish of which Holy Rosary Church is now a part. It is one of the six Catholic churches that make up Holy Family Parish of Galveston and Bolivar.
Official documents of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston Archdiocese and Texas records say that when Holy Rosary was a parish, it was one of the first Black Catholic parishes in Texas, But the Rev. Waters, who wrote the centennial history of Holy Rosary, is reported by some parishioners as having been very confident that Holy Rosary Parish was the first Black Catholic Parish in the state.
He documented what he believed under cannon law to be the beginning of Holy Rosary as a parish.
“Shortly after the new school was erected, the bishop sent a priest to offer Mass in it on Sundays. As pastor, he often said Mass there himself. As the Mass is the center of life of Catholic worship, the history of Holy Rosary as a parish dates back to that happy Sunday of 1888 when the Holy Sacrifice was first offered in the school,” Waters wrote.
However, the school is recorded in other official documents as being a mission of St Mary’s Cathedral.
Construction began on the first Holy Rosary Church building in 1891, and this structure was blessed on October 1, 1893. The convent on its property is remembered for saving lives during the hurricane of 1900 when 200 people found refuge there at its location on Avenue I and 25th Street.
Currently, none of the original buildings that made up Holy Rosary Parish are still standing. However, bonds of love and a legacy of community and Catholic faith remain strong at Holy Rosary Church in Galveston at 1420 31st St. in Galveston.
