<Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> There was a small Catholic population in the English colonies, chiefly in Maryland . It supported local schools, often under Jesuit auspices . The small Catholic Spanish communities in New Mexico and California, which joined the United States in 1848, had little in the way of organized schooling . </P> <P> Much more important were schools of New Orleans, under Spanish and French control until 1803 . Well - to - do families sent their children to private Catholic schools run by Ursulines and other orders of nuns . The Sisters of the Holy Family brought literacy and training in job skills to both free and enslaved black girls . The earliest continually operating school for girls in the United States is Ursuline Academy in New Orleans . It was founded in 1727 by the Sisters of the Order of Saint Ursula . The Academy graduated the first female pharmacist, and the first woman to contribute a book of literary merit . It contained the first convent . It was the first free school and first retreat center for ladies, and first classes for female African - American slaves, free women of color, and Native Americans . In the Gulf Coast and Mississippi Valley, Ursulines provided the first center of social welfare in the Mississippi Valley, first boarding school in Louisiana and the first school of music in New Orleans . </P> <P> As the nation was mostly Protestant in the 19th century, there was anti-Catholic sentiment related to heavy immigration from Catholic Ireland after the 1840s, and a feeling that Catholic children should be educated in public schools to become American . In the 1880s most states passed a constitutional amendment, called Blaine Amendments, forbidding tax money be used to fund parochial schools, which affected also Lutherans and other denominations that operated schools . By 1890 the Irish, who controlled the Church in the U.S., had built an extensive network of parishes and parish schools ("parochial schools") across the urban Northeast and Midwest . The Irish and other Catholic ethnic groups looked to parochial schools not only to protect their religion, but to enhance their culture and language . </P>

Who started the first catholic school in america