DeSales Heights Acadamy

DeSales Heights Academy opened in 1867 and was one of the first schools in Parkersburg, West Virginia. The school closed in 1992, but was able to survive for almost 130 years thanks to the strong Roman Catholic population that existed in Parkersburg from its early years. DeSales Heights Academy boarded and educated many young women throughout West Virginia and the United States, and accepted international students as well. DeSales Heights is an important academy in the history of Catholic education in West Virginia.

DeSales Heights Academy was founded by a group of eight Catholic nuns from Washington, D.C., and Frederick, Maryland. They set out for Parkersburg on July 25, 1864, but did not reach their destination until August 6th after being delayed by the turbulent Civil War. Led by Mother Superior Mary Appolonia Diggs, the Sisters of the Visitation of Holy Mary established a school for the poor children of Parkersburg in 1867. This school was first called the Catholic Academy and was originally located on the corner of Fifth and Avery Street. In 1900 the school moved to a larger building and was renamed DeSales Heights in honor of Saint Francis DeSales. Saint Francis DeSales founded the order of the Sisters of Visitation in France in 1610. The Sisters established their first Catholic school in the United States in 1816.

 The new monastery and school on Murdoch Avenue was much larger and included interior gardens and a chapel. DeSales Heights offered young women a basic core curriculum while also teaching the girls skills that would aid them in finding employment after graduation.  The sisters ran the boarding school for young women at DeSales Heights until 1977. They then opened the state’s first Montessori school, an educational style based off of Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori.

The Sisters of Visitation were semi-cloistered nuns in that they worked in the secular world during the day through teaching, but lived in cloistered quarters as per Catholic tradition. Talk of the school’s closure began in the early 1990s as the enrollment rate dropped and the Academy became too large and expensive for the elderly nuns to maintain. In 1992, the remaining sisters voted to close the monastery and school. The sisters then dispersed to other monasteries in the United States and Europe. When the building closed the coffins of 19 nuns were moved from the chapel crypt to a nearby Catholic cemetery. The furnishings of DeSales Heights were sold at auction and the current St. Joseph’s Hospital of Parkersburg bought the building in 1997.

In its final years standing as an empty monastery, DeSales Heights was rumored to be haunted and would draw in many trespassers looking for supernatural experiences. After many years of vandalism and a fire that ruined part of the building, DeSales Heights Academy was torn down in 2002. The DeSales Heights Academy Alumnae Association puts on an annual banquet each year for graduates and their families to remember the school and to honor the nuns who ran it. 

http://www.electricearl.com/parkersburg/desales.html Goodwin, Jacqueline G. "DeSales Heights." e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. 14 July 2015. Web. 05 February 2016.