The SHCJ: Celebrating 175 Years

Old photos. What Holy Child student hasn’t learned the history of our schools without viewing wonderful old photos?  At Mayfield Junior School, students are very familiar with the smiling faces of our founding Sisters peering out from long black habits and serene images of Cornelia Connelly as a wife, mother, and woman of faith. They love to hear stories of how things have changed and also how many traditions have remained. Each year we celebrate Founders’ Day in October and Cornelia’s birthday in January with appreciation for our heritage and respect for all that came before us. 

This year we commemorate the 175th anniversary of the founding of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus (SHCJ). The founding is formally recognized as October 15, 1846, in Derby, England, when Cornelia Connelly and three postulants assisted at their first Mass as a religious community. One founding led to another. At Mayfield Junior School, our own history, traditions, and spirit began in 1931 when Holy Child Sisters opened our school here on Euclid Avenue. This heritage and the relationship we continue today with the SHCJ is important to who we are as a school and community.

During Cornelia Connelly’s lifetime, convents were established up and down England, and in 1862 she sent six Sisters to America to open a Holy Child School in Towanda, Pennsylvania. Despite severe conditions, overwhelming responsibility, and financial woes, these six women, who arrived in a country consumed with Civil War, were determined to make the best of the situation and did so by surviving with creativity, humor, and a deep belief in their mission. Their courage allowed the philosophy and ideals of Holy Child education to flourish into what, at one time, were over 50 schools all over the country. In the 1930s, the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus arrived in West Africa and began work in Calabar, Nigeria. Since then, they have established and served in ministries throughout Nigeria and in Ghana and Chad.