Ann Teresa Mathews
Ann Teresa Mathews was a nun born in the British colony of Maryland who founded the first Catholic convent in the United States in 1790.Biography
Mathews was born to a Catholic family in the British colony of Maryland. She was one of seven siblings, one of whom was the priest and educator William Matthews. In 1754 she went to Europe to join the English-speaking Discalced Carmelites in Hoogstraet in the Austrian Netherlands. She joined the order on December 3, 1755 and was elected prioress of their convent on April 13, 1774.
In 1790, with the impact of French Revolution still uncertain and Emperor Joseph II's campaign against monastic establishments under way, Father Charles Neale, the nuns' Maryland-born chaplain, offered Mathews farmland in Port Tobacco, Maryland, where she could build a convent. The new residence was dedicated on October 15, 1790. A convent for contemplatives, it was the first convent for Catholic women established in the United States. Mathews was its prioress until her death ten years later.
She had nieces Susanna Mathews and Ann Mathews who joined her in Hoogstraet and returned with her to the Maryland convent.
