Our Congregation's History

We, Sisters of Saint Dominic of Caldwell, trace our roots first to 1206 when Dominic de Guzman established a monastery of nuns in Prouille, France, and then to the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Regensburg, Germany, founded in 1233 by Blessed Jordan of Saxony, immediate successor of Saint Dominic. 

In 1853, four nuns from Regensburg responded to a request from Pennsylvania's Abbot Wimmer to travel to the United States to provide Catholic education for the many German immigrants' children. Landing in New York late in August of that year, the nuns found a home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and opened a school in September. 

Within a few years, the growing Brooklyn convent sent sisters to establish a similar school in 1860 in lower New York City at Saint Nicholas Church. From there, in 1872, sisters crossed the Hudson to set up another school at Saint Boniface in Jersey City. For several years, they traveled back and forth from Manhattan until accommodations were made for them in 1874. Ground was broken in 1878 for the new Saint Dominic Convent and Academy. It is from Saint Dominic Academy and its convent in Jersey City that the Sisters of Saint Dominic of the American Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus came into being in 1881 after separating from Manhattan, and Mother Catharine Muth was appointed the first Prioress.

A tuberculosis epidemic that was devastating the cities of the Northeast was also taking the lives of novices and young sisters in Jersey City. In 1883, Mother Catharine Muth traveled to Caldwell, the “Denver of the East,” to find a place with clean air and water for her sisters to recuperate. After multiple land purchases, the tract of land grew to 100 acres by 1892. Ground was broken for a new building, designed in the style of Holy Cross Convent in Regensberg, and the cornerstone was laid on May 22, 1893. The Motherhouse was officially moved to the Caldwell location in 1912.

Throughout most of its history, the ministry of the congregation has been devoted almost entirely to formal education, in schools belonging to the congregation—Saint Dominic Academy, Mount Saint Dominic Academy, Lacordaire Academy and Caldwell University—and many parish schools. In the years since renewal following the Second Vatican Council, the educational talent and training spread out to many less obvious educational endeavors, among them various forms of parish ministry, Genesis Farm, providing senior housing at Marian Manor and Siena Village, advocating for justice in corporate stockholder meetings, teaching and providing public health services in rural Central America, organizing and providing hospice care, and taking corporate stances against global social and environmental issues. Through all this, the educational character of the congregation continues to be effective.

Who are the Caldwell Dominicans today?  We are still women of the Word, preaching through our lives and committed to the Dominican motto: to contemplate and to give to others the fruits of that contemplation. The schools we built, the senior housing centers we sponsored, the individual ministries in which our sisters engaged—all of these are the fruits of that contemplation—our legacy. Essential to the continuance of our mission are the many dedicated laity who work with us day by day, our Associates who carry the mission forward, and the generous benefactors who believe in the importance of God’s work.

The Caldwell Dominican Motherhouse today.