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Convent Cemetery

The Sisters of Providence Convent Cemetery is where many of our sisters have been laid to rest.

In 2020, the Sisters of Providence opened the Providence Community Cemetery, a columbarium adjacent to the Convent Cemetery where people with a special connection to the Congregation can have cremains interred. Learn more about the Providence Community Cemetery.

Visit the cemetery

Maps of the cemetery are available in the Providence Hall Phone Room and at Providence Spirituality & Conference Center.

Tours of the cemetery are part of the outdoor tour of the campus at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. For more information, call 812-535-4531.

Cemetery history

Originally, the convent cemetery was located on a small hill near the original Saint Anne Shell Chapel. Saint Mother Theodore and other early sisters were buried here. However, as the congregation grew, the need for more land became evident.

Mother Mary Cecilia Bailly, second general superior of the Congregation, purchased over 30 acres of land in October 1857. In 1860, the Congregation set the limits of the cemetery and hired a stump puller to work on the cemetery.

Sister Seraphine Jennings, who was buried on April 10, 1861, was the first sister to occupy the new cemetery. In the years that followed, the Congregation exhumed the graves from the earlier cemetery and transferred the bodies to the new location.

Saint Mother Theodore Guerin was among the sisters transferred to the new cemetery, and a portion of her remains still rest there. Now, the Convent Cemetery is the resting place of several thousand Sisters of Providence, as well as of several of the community’s chaplain priests.