Local parishioners introduced the nuns to the store owners and guaranteed payment for their purchases. Thankfully a stray cow wandered onto their property and they were able to milk it providing some nourishment. Storekeepers refused to sell groceries to the nuns. The Benedictine Sisters purchased the vacant military school in 1889, and after arriving in Cañon City, they were met with hostility and fear by the community. However, when the mining industry and population declined, the sisters began looking for another location in which they could carry out the traditional Benedictine policy establishing schools within a monastery as means of bringing Christ to the world. The Benedictine Sisters of Chicago arrived in Breckenridge as missionaries in 1886, taking over a miners hospital that had been run by the county and eventually opening a school. Some reports say that the high tuition costs, $600 for a 42-week school year, eventually led to the closing of the school in 1886. Despite the donation, the school did not become financially stable. Shortly after opening financial issues began, and a $100,000 donation was given by the Grand Army of the Republic, which led to renaming the school as the Grand Army Collegiate and Military Institute. Students were accepted as young as 6 and required to wear uniforms.Īccording to a 1960 article on the history of the school by the Cañon City Daily Record, classes offered included mathematics and commercial science, mining engineering and assaying, art, and general preparatory classes, as well as military tactics. Sawyer, a Civil War veteran, was the first school commandant of the Colorado Collegiate and Military Institute and he, along with five teachers, oversaw the 1881 class consisting of 66 students, 18 of which were girls. Originally built as a military school in 1881, the three-story Victorian building on Pike and Seventh, known as St Scholastica, served the community for 111 years.Į.H.
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