In 1859 Bishop John Mary Odin sent a group of Ursulines from Galveston to Liberty to establish a convent and girls' school. Under the leadership of an energetic French nun, Mother Ambroise, the Sisters bought land at this site and erected two frame buildings. Many prominent Liberty families enrolled their daughters in the convent school, as boarders or day students. The turmoil of the Civil War (1861-1865) caused attendance to decline, and the institution closed in 1866. Occupied by two other academies in the late 1860s, the Ursuline buildings were dismantled in the 1880s.