The story of Rose Philippine Duchesne is the story of an educator, a missionary, and a pioneer of the American frontier.

Born in Grenoble in the French Alps, Philippine entered a Visitation convent at eighteen. The outbreak of the French Revolution, however, forced her to return home where she continued her vocation of helping the poor and suffering, especially those imprisoned and abandoned children.  In 1804 she was able to enter religious life again when St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, who in 1800 had founded the Society of the Sacred Heart, received her into this new educational congregation.  Initially Philippine worked tirelessly as a teacher and administrator in the Society’s schools in France.  As her prayer deepened, she became convinced that God was calling her to the “New World” to work with the Native Americans.  

In 1818 when she was 49 years old, Philippine with four companions set sail across the Atlantic on an eleven-week voyage.  They arrived in New Orleans and then went on to St. Charles, a small trading post at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.  At St. Charles and later at Florissant, Missouri, the nuns’ austere life included teaching, tending the livestock, digging potatoes, planting corn, making and mending the students’ clothing. Thus they carried forward the educational ministry of the Society of the Sacred Heart.  At St. Charles Philippine opened the first free school west of the Mississippi and later founded several boarding schools up and down the Mississippi Valley.