San Antonio 1850. Population: 3,488. Southwestern mission town swollen by a heavy influx of German immigration the decade before.

Construction had begun on the "Bat Cave," the city-county courthouse and jail on the northwest corner of Military Plaza.

S. Menger and Sons established Soap Works, the first soap factory in Texas.

May, 1852. Three French Marianist missionaries – Jean Baptiste Laignoux, Nicholas Koenig and Xavier Mauclerc – dressed alike in black suits with white ruffled collars, stepped off the Indianola stagecoach to get a glimpse of downtown where they would establish their school. With them was their director, Brother Andrew Edel, who had begun a mission in Ohio three years before and who, by the time he met the trio in Texas, could speak German, French and English. Edel had been ordered by Bishop John Mary Odin to leave Ohio, meet the French missionaries in New Orleans and accompany them to this frontier settlement.

The previous year, the Bishop traveled to France to plead with the Society of Mary superiors to send missionaries to San Antonio. In his voice was a sense of urgency. "A good school alone will be able to regenerate the people since the city is swarming with children plunged in the depths of ignorance," he told them. In 1851 French Ursuline sisters had opened a school for girls on the banks of the San Antonio River. Now, a short distance away would be a school for boys. The four brothers rented a room on the second floor of a livery stable on the southwest corner of Military Plaza, in the same block with the Spanish Governor’s Palace and near San Fernando Cathedral.

And on Aug. 25, 1852, the school opened with a faculty of five (the four brothers and a layman, Timothy O’Neill) and an enrollment of 12 boys, including boarders who lived with the brothers in a small adobe house at the corner of West Commerce and South Laredo streets. From the first day, the school welcomed children of all nationalities and religions. Within one month, the enrollment had grown to 30 and by mid-year burgeoned to more than 100. Almost immediately Bishop Odin began raising money for a permanent structure, and on March 1, 1853, St. Mary’s Institute opened on Water Street (later named College Street). The lot, along the east bank of the San Antonio River, had been purchased for only $800 because it neighbored an Apache Indian stockade.

Both school and residence transferred to the new 60-foot by 25-foot, two-story facility, built with stones transported by ox cart from the Gulf Coast. Classrooms comprised the first floor, and faculty and boarders lived in two rooms on the second floor. St. Mary’s Institute was often referred to as "The French School" as most of the students were sons of the influential French in town. Teachers were addressed as "Monsieur" rather than "Brother," although English and Spanish were the official languages of the school and German the dominant language of the region.

Originally Bishop Odin planned the school to serve the Spanish-speaking population of the region, and even endowed the school for that purpose by deeding over to it in perpetuity 90 acres of Mission Concepción and the mission itself. On these grounds Brother Edel raised food for the brothers and students and cultivated the gardens, which were described by a visiting cleric as producing a grape as fine as any in Spain. By 1860, San Antonio had become, for the first time, the largest town in Texas. St. Mary’s Institute’s enrollment grew exponentially, and buildings were added to the original structure. Although supplies were scarce during the Civil War, enrollment was not drastically affected and, in fact, slight gains were made.

Post-war enrollment resumed a steady climb: 325 boys, 33 of them boarders. Brother Charles Francis, who assumed the school’s director position, was as comfortable conducting lessons as he was surveying the boarders’ mealtime manners to correct any breach of etiquette. During his tenure, additional buildings were added to the original structure to accommodate the growing enrollment, including a "four-story skyscraper" on the Institute’s west side, making it the tallest downtown structure at that time. More than any other, Charles Francis is credited with the Institute’s orderly development, its prosperity and its architectural harmony. When enrollment reached 385 in 1882, the Institute offered an expanded, more comprehensive curriculum and changed its name to St. Mary’s College. More changes followed.

By 1891 San Antonio’s population had grown to 45,000 and downtown was bustling and crowded. The Marianists decided to move their growing cadre of boarders away from the city to a safer and quieter campus, so the brothers purchased 75 acres in the Woodlawn Hills area, northwest of the city. The land, owned by The West End Town Co., was sold for $1 on the sole condition that construction of a college building should be started within one year. The downtown campus remained open for day students, and the new campus was easily accessible through the West End Electric Street Car Co. Ground was broken for the new school, St. Louis College, and on Sept. 4, 1894, the school opened for grades 5 through 14. Tuition and boarding was set at $200 for the 10 months, but extra charges were assessed for musical instruments, telegraphy and French. German, Spanish and Latin were incorporated into the regular curriculum at no additional charge. Since school was considered an extension of family, obedience to all prefects and teachers was expected of all students. And so was academic excellence. A local newspaper heralded St. Louis College as "a noble institution destined to be a great education center of the Southwest."

The college took a step in that direction when, in 1895, the state authorized it to issue degrees, giving it the status of junior college. Four years later, the academic excellence of St. Mary’s College and St. Louis College students was recognized at the International Fair of San Antonio when 17 first-place prizes were given for exhibits of students’ work. The faculty later adopted the motto, "Domine, Dirige Nos" (Lord, Guide Us) and the college colors of blue (truth) and white (light). Within the next 10 years, a full college curriculum was established and the first baccalaureate degrees were awarded. Both campuses continued to grow. To accommodate the 150 boarders enrolled by 1908, Reinbolt Hall was built. In 1921 all college classes were transferred from downtown to the St. Louis College campus, which, by this time, had added two dormitories. In 1923, St. Louis College became St. Mary’s College with an enrollment of 12 in the freshman class. Grade school and high school students remained at the downtown school, now named St. Mary’s Academy.

Change came quickly. St. Mary’s College was admitted to the Association of Texas Colleges and ranked as a senior college. By the time the school graduated its first class of seven bachelor’s degree candidates in 1927, evening coeducational classes were being held at the downtown campus, and summer coed classes were added to the Woodlawn campus. That year St. Mary’s College’s name was changed to St. Mary’s University at San Antonio. Some of the University’s finest students would later become its finest faculty. John Totten was slated to attend West Point Military Academy, but in 1931 he came to this Catholic university instead. "I was the black sheep," he explained. "I went to novitiate." He would return to the University to teach philosophy two decades later as a Marianist brother. "We had top-notch teachers at St. Mary’s," he said. "Almost all of the teachers were educated in Europe; they went to the universities in Paris. When they taught here, they really knew what they were doing." Claude Stanush, Totten’s contemporary, was one of many graduates who went on to become a journalist for national publications. Although the University offered no journalism courses, Stanush’s love for language began in his English classes.

"Brother Peter Schlitt made us aware of the origin of words and how they grew out of life and daily experience," he said. "We learned the rhythm of language and the relationship of words to life." The only student in third-year Latin, Stanush remained after language classes to hear Brother Peter play the cello and to learn about classical music. "It was this type of largeness of experience of these brothers who were able to communicate in so many ways," Stanush said. Along with the rigors of academia, there was also the humor, as the teachers attempted to corral the young men in their charge. Brother John Hahn would funnel the students down the steps of Reinbolt Hall and into the chapel to say the rosary. "We called him the visible head of the church because of his bald head," Totten explained.

In the 1930s the University took over the administration of the San Antonio Law School and added a graduate school and an ROTC program. By 1945 a department of business had been formed. But with the onset of World War II, enrollment dropped drastically. Following the war, the tenor of the student body changed. The veterans who returned to school were more serious than their predecessors. Although the University experienced record enrollment, it had no money to build, so makeshift classrooms were created from buildings dismantled and transported to the campus from the local military bases. Personnel and money were stretched. After teaching a full load of classes (Monday through Saturday), the brothers also proctored the dorms and maintained the grounds. In 1963, after 111 years as an officially "all-male" school, the University formally became coeducational. Two years later, enrollment topped 2,265 in the University’s four schools – Arts and Sciences, Business and Administration, Law and Graduate – 37 majors were offered and tuition was $700 per year.

That year Alma Lopez was one of five women enrolled in the law school located downtown. In addition to surviving a rigorous curriculum, her class followed the law school through its two downtown locations and finally to the new Law Center on the Woodlawn campus in 1967. "The way the school was run was conducive to why so many of us were successful in the practice," she explained. "They stressed preparation for the bar. It was regimented, and it prepared us for what we needed to do in our professions." Women also comprised an integral element of the faculty. Idel Bruckman, Ph.D., came to St. Mary’s in 1965 to teach psychology. Bruckman, who helped build the clinical psychology program, was one of two female departmental chairs.

"St. Mary’s gave the feeling of a small town. We were a very close community, and we really cared about each other," she said. That community spirit served the University well in subsequent years, as it added a division of engineering, opened women’s residence halls and established educational institutes. By its 125th anniversary in 1977, St. Mary’s enrollment numbered 3,600 students from 42 states and 29 foreign countries; 50 Marianists comprised the core of the faculty. Enrollment experienced only a short-lived drop the next year, when a four-year, public university in San Antonio opened to underclassmen. In 1989 St. Mary’s was the first San Antonio four-year university to bring doctoral-level education to the city with a Ph.D. program in counseling. Today the University continues to grow and adapt to the educational and social needs of the community it serves.

In 1994 St. Mary’s established a Service Learning Center – the only one of its kind in San Antonio – to serve as a clearinghouse for all community service projects, providing information on community needs and volunteer opportunities. Today more than 4,100 students are enrolled in degree programs offered from three undergraduate schools and two graduate-level schools, including the School of Law. And with these programs comes distinction. St. Mary’s has consistently ranked in the top 10 nationally for the number of Mexican American students accepted into medical school. In 2002, U.S. News & World Report’s "America’s Best Colleges" issue ranked St. Mary’s among the best universities in the West region for the eighth consecutive year.

In this landmark sesquicentennial year, Charles L. Cotrell, Ph.D., St. Mary’s first lay president and himself a product of Marianist education aptly reflects, "We celebrate six generations of Marianist contributions to education in San Antonio, the region and beyond. As the seventh generation, we are the beneficiaries of the Marianists’ dedication, sacrifice and inspired teaching." The Marianists who came to San Antonio 150 years ago obediently responded to the call of their superiors to establish an educational institution to regenerate the people of the city. Through their work and the work of those who followed them, St. Mary’s University has maintained its reputation as "a noble institution destined to be a great education center of the Southwest."