St. Joseph Catholic school is formally recognized as having been established in 1870. But its roots can be traced back 17 years prior, making it one of the oldest high schools in the entire state of Mississippi. And the oldest continuously operating High School in the greater Jackson metro area.
Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM
St. Joseph high school a lot of people don’t know this, but St. Joseph High School actually had his beginning in 1853, the priest Father larae, who went on to become a civil war chaplain and Archbishop of New Orleans. He started with a gentleman tutoring families in the man’s name was Kelly, and he had a daughter that was a sister of mercy later on.
Father Mike O’brien
St. Joe’s a very old school. I don’t know if people realize how old it is.
Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM
The facilities Father larae used for tutoring were burned not once but twice by General Sherman of the Union Army in 1863. Despite the setback, teaching continued until the aptly named Sisters of Mercy arrived in 1870.
Father Mike O’brien
Now the Sisters of Mercy did not come until 1870. But that was the official starting date and the name of St. Joseph. They named it St. Joseph in 1870. So it is the oldest school in the Jackson area.
Father Mike O’brien
The very first place that St. Joseph started was downtown Jackson, in St. Peter’s Cathedral,
Narrator
Charged with building a school in the least Catholic state in the country, and one that was still suffering from the wounds of the Civil War. The Sisters of Mercy were forced to deal with additional adversity a mere seven years into their efforts.
Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM
Yellow Fever epidemic in 1878 was a terrible thing in this that was one of the worst ones in 1878. There was no cure for it or whatever. And one third of the Mississippi population died.
Father Mike O’brien
Vicksburg and Jackson were decimated, and they had to quarantine the two cities
Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM
1978 was a really bad year for yellow fever.
Narrator
As St. Joseph in the entire state attempted to rebound from the yellow fever epidemic. It was the tiny population of Catholic families in the area that allowed the private school to survive.
Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM
Back in the early days too, St. Joe being a Catholic school in Jackson, being a like maybe 3% Catholic town, a lot of families wanting to send their youngsters to Catholic school for the religious education and good schooling and all that kind of thing.
Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM
Frall skein that killed the German, whatever (2:02). But 78 was a really bad year for yellow fever.
Greg Frascogna
We received students from all over Canada, central Mississippi, even and, and so we had a lot of unique names, you know, the cannons, arrows, no blocks, and most all these seem to have brothers you know, like Frascogna of course, and same way, there were a lot of names that you didn’t see every day, or anywhere else around town
Father Mike O’brien
and the school always had a great ethnic mix. Talons, Lebanese, Irish, Hispanic, and later the African American community.
Al Nuzzo
Well, St. Joe was a special place to me because it was where all the Catholics from the Catholic schools and the Catholic churches went to school. And that’s where the Catholic families were. And it was, it was nice to be around people that had those same beliefs. I mean, we’re all Christians, but I mean, Catholics are a very small minority in Mississippi,
Greg Frascogna
I don’t think it was as a student after going through Catholic grade school and growing up, that we thought of it as being that different or that we were such a minority we were clearly and I think later on, we realized that, but I think we were probably always in that minority of Catholics and Catholic schools. And it didn’t, it didn’t seem, it didn’t bother any of us. We were all there together.
Narrator
While the familiarity of faith was of extreme importance to the many families choosing St. Joe, there had to be additional selling points to recruit students away from well-established public schools, like Central and murrah. The Sisters of Mercy naturally created such a selling point by implementing a rigorous academic curriculum.
Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM
They had good science teachers, and we had good math teachers. I think we had a wonderful academic program in the early days too, and and the students went on to do real real well,
Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM
So I was kind of thinking that I was going to play football in college, which was my dream, then I would probably go to Mora. And then after Mora, a lot of those guys every year five or six of them would go to Ole Miss or somewhere and that was kind of like what I was thinking but my mother had other thoughts. And she informed me early on that I was going to go to St. Joseph High School and that environment, I learned how to study I learned how to focus, I learned how to, to take a test. But I was far from the smartest person in my class. I couldn’t even get into the Advanced Math class.
Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM
I think we had a real good academic program pushed him up into high school. And I think the High School program was really a good program.
Roger Parkes
But then when I got I got a scholarship Ole miss and so why show up at Ole Miss. I’m taking English and you know, all the stuff you’ve taken him, I’m going to go into, I’m going to be a dentist when I grow up. So I’m taking pre-med classes, and I had no problems with Ole miss, I mean, I’m talking about none.