Background
Christened Alice, she was born in County Laois, Ireland, the daughter of Denis and Catherine Lalor, but moved with her family to Ballyragget, Company Kilkenny as a child.
Archbishop of Baltimore Most Rev
Christened Alice, she was born in County Laois, Ireland, the daughter of Denis and Catherine Lalor, but moved with her family to Ballyragget, Company Kilkenny as a child.
At her request, John Lanigan, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Ossory, made arrangements for her entrance into a convent of his diocese which her family opposed. They arrived in America on 5 January 1795. Moving to Philadelphia in 1797, she became acquainted with French
Neale, then the pastor of Saint Joseph"s Church in that city, and under his direction she devoted herself to works of piety and charity with a small group of associates.
The group went on to open an academy for the instruction of girls. French Neale purchased a house for Lalor and two companions to open a school of their own, a house which stood within the grounds of the later Visitation Monastery, the oldest monastery of the Order in the United States.
The group increased from three to five members.
At this time, enclosure was only partially observed. They did their own shopping and marketing, went to church, and accompanied their students on daily walks.
Sister Ignatia Sharpe died in the summer of 1802, after a long illness.
They made corn bread from corn they raised, husked, and shelled before sending to the mill. a crrek which emptied into the Potomac crossed the property. The sisters cleaned, salted and put up their own fish. They had a fine vegetable garden.
They also saved the parings and cores of apples, and by boiling these made a sweet drink to vary the meager fare.
The "pious ladies", as they were called, aspired to become Religious Sisters. Bishop Neale wished to affiliate them with the Visitation Order.
The disturbed condition of affairs in Europe, due to the Napoleonic Wars, prevented this until 1816, when he obtained a grant from Pope Pius VII for the community to be considered as belonging to the Order of the Visitation. Mother Teresa and the two other Sisters were professed on the Feast of the Holy Innocents (December 28) of that same year, and became the first mother superior of the monastery.
She lived to see three other houses of the Institute founded, offshoots of the mother community: Mobile, Alabama in 1832.
Kaskaskia (afterwards transferred to Street Louis), in 1833. And Baltimore, in 1837. She died in 1846, aged around 77 years.
She was a first cousin of Patrick "Patt" Lalor (1781-1856) (elected in 1832 as the first Catholic Member of Parliament for County Laois in two centuries) and of Joseph O"Lawlor (1768-1850), the Irish born Spanish general and military governor of Granada.