Mary Frances Clarke

Irish nun

Mary Frances Clarke, B. V. M. (c. 15 December 1802 – 4 December 1887) was an Irish nun who founded the Catholic order of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Initially started in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to provide educational opportunities for immigrants' children, the order relocated in the 1840s to Dubuque, Iowa, and established prairie schools across the high plains. One of those initial schools later became Clarke University. She was posthumously inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame.

Mary Frances Clarke was baptized on 15 December 1802 at the St. Andrew's Chapel on Townsend Street in Dublin, Ireland. and Cornelius Clarke. Attending a penny school, Clarke learned botany, music, needlework and to read and write. She later acted as a secretary and bookkeeper for her father's leather business. When the plague broke out in Dublin, Clarke and several friends moved into a slum area on North Anne Street in Dublin and began a girls' school. Clarke continued to push for full approval of the order's constitution, which was granted on 15 March 1885 by the Vatican. At that time, the sisters requested that Clarke be designated the Superior General for her lifetime. The Vatican deferred the decision to the Bishop of Dubuque, who gave his approval. Two years later, on 4 December 1887, Clarke died after a brief illness At the time that she died, Clarke and the order she had established had founded schools in 23 towns in Iowa, in Wisconsin, Chicago, Wichita and as far west as San Francisco.