History of Visitation Academy

In September 1846, eleven Visitation nuns arrived from Georgetown to tend to the educational needs of ten boarding students. At the request of the Jesuits at neighboring St. John’s Parish, the sisters conducted a free school for the girls of the parish until 1914 when the Notre Dame sisters established St. John parochial school. The Visitation nuns then concentrated on the boarding school, as being more in the keeping with their rule of cloister.

As time went by, the Academy grew in size and population, adding three acres of adjacent land, new buildings, cloistered gardens and many more students. The names enrolled in the registers of the early days of the school are representative of many prominent pioneer Catholic families not only of Maryland and Virginia, but of almost every state in the Union.

The Academy survived Union Army occupation during the Civil War when it became a hospital for wounded soldiers. During this period, the Sisters of Charity came from Emmitsburg to nurse the victims of war, while the sixty stranded boarders found safety and shelter in the impenetrable enclosure of the monastery. There, classes for the girls went on as usual.

The Academy has since flourished as an educational institution, changing with the times. In June of 1950, the Visitation high school closed while the elementary school continued to flourish. In the spring of 2005, at the bequest of Rome, the historic legacy of the beloved Visitation sisters came to a quiet close. The remaining sisters retired to a monastery in Rockville, Virginia, and the last class of boarding student graduated.

Today, the Visitation Academy continues its legacy of serving as a premier single-sex institute of learning rooted in the catholic tradition. Here, the past and present intermingle to provide the best educational setting for the young women of historic Frederick and surrounding areas.