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Women’s History Month invites reflection. At 91Ů��, that reflection runs deep, because the women at the center of this institution’s founding weren’t just participants in history. They made it.

 On March 16, Mercy’s School of Education hosted “Hidden Figures of Mercy: Women Leaders Who Shaped Our Early Years,” a presentation by Dean Eric Martone. The event was part of Mercy’s Women’s History Month programming and our 75th anniversary celebration — a year dedicated to honoring the people and decisions that brought this university into existence.

 Martone, who co-authored “Mercy College: Yesterday & Today” with Associate Professor Michael Perrota, has spent years reconstructing that story from letters, records and archival materials. What he’s found is a history more layered, more dramatic and more human than many Mavericks know.

 In recounting the history of 91Ů��, Martone highlighted a small group of “hidden” leaders from the 1950s and early 1960s who deserve renewed recognition. Among these figures were Sister Mary Regina, Sister Mary Jeanne Ferrier, and Sister Mary Salome White. Several factors contributed to their omission from the official narrative, he noted: the Sisters themselves, at times “embarrassed” by the college’s humble beginnings, tended to downplay this formative period. Moreover, the presidency in the 1950s was not a fully distinct executive role, as these women held the title by virtue of serving as Mother Provincial rather than as solely dedicated institutional leaders. A similar pattern can be seen in the early leadership of the Board of Trustees. The first two chairs — Sister Mary Regina Haughney and Sister Mary Constance Golden — are often overlooked, largely because a new board structure was established when Mercy transitioned to an independent, nonsectarian institution at the end of the 1960s. 

The Foundation: Sisters of Mercy in Tarrytown

 In 1892, the Sisters of Mercy left New York City for Westchester, acquiring the Kingsland Estate in Tarrytown — named for Ambrose Kingsland, a wealthy merchant and former mayor of New York City, best remembered for establishing Central Park. The property would become the Sisters’ home, orphanage, school and eventually, the start of a university.

 Their mission was clear from the beginning. The Sisters believed that education was the most direct path out of poverty — and that poverty wasn’t only a material condition.

 “They believed very much in this mission of trying to make education accessible to anyone who wanted to achieve it,” Martone said. “And that achieving higher education could help people get better jobs, become more cultured and more intellectual.” He continued, “That would then help them escape levels of poverty, including ignorance. So, escaping poverty was not just a material thing, it was also an intellectual thing. Escaping poverty meant not only overcoming financial hardship but also overcoming ignorance.”

 Their neighbors on the hill happened to be the Rockefellers.

 John D. Rockefeller Sr. had purchased roughly 400 acres in Tarrytown in the 1880s, eventually building Kykuit mansion, the family’s principal residence for decades. The proximity created an unlikely relationship. The Sisters, mostly from working-class backgrounds, were drawn to the Rockefeller gardens and occasionally wandered close to the family’s home. The Rockefellers responded with a polite but pointed letter requesting the Sisters to be more mindful about getting too close to the mansion and infringing on their privacy.

 What followed was decades of an arrangement that neither party understood in the same way. The Sisters’ property was often in need of maintenance work, as the Sisters were often in need of extra funding. This prompted the Rockefellers to view the Sisters’ property as unkempt and the noise from the children’s orphanage and later school as disruptive. The Rockefellers spent decades, on and off, unsuccessfully trying to purchase the Sisters’ property and support their relocation. As an alternative, the Rockefellers’ solution, consistently, was to write a check to address whatever bothered them. They repaired the gate, repaired and painted the Sisters’ roof green to blend it into the hillside, relocated the noisy children’s playground to the far side of the property, and eventually paid to reroute an entire railroad line that ran through the Sisters’ land — not purely out of generosity toward the Sisters, but because, like the playground, the sound of it disturbed the serenity of their quiet country estate. 

 “The Rockefellers are doing all these things like this for the Sisters primarily to help them enjoy their own property better,” Martone noted, “but the Sisters started feeling like the Rockefellers were becoming their patrons.”

 Over time, particularly through Nelson Rockefeller, who grew up with the Sisters as neighbors and later served as governor of New York and vice president of the United States, the family became one of the Sisters’ most reliable benefactors. Nelson had the most altruistic attitude toward helping the Sisters compared to his father and grandfather. He paid to plow their driveway, donated company stock to help them purchase tractors and helped fund gymnasium repairs. 

 Sister Mary Gratia Maher (1890s-1970): Building the College

 By the late 1940s, the Sisters had been training their own members as teachers and paying other institutions to grant them academic credit. The arrangement worked — until the Sisters asked themselves why. Why were they paying outside institutions, which had been founded by men, to credential women the Sisters themselves were educating?

 That question became Mercy Junior College. And Sister Mary Gratia Maher was charged with building it.

 Maher was born in the 1890s to Irish-American parents and had spent her professional life as a teacher and administrator in the Bronx, most notably as principal of St. Catharine’s Academy — the same site that would host what would evolve into Mercy’s Bronx campus. She held degrees from Fordham and the Catholic University of America and was completing her doctoral dissertation at the time she took on the task of creating a new institution of higher education. Her dissertation subject: women’s religious instruction at women’s Catholic colleges.

She drafted the curriculum. She handled every registration requirement. She managed every administrative process necessary to open and operate a college. She became Mercy’s first dean — a position that would evolve into the provost — and held it from 1950 to 1962. Mercy’s first classes were held September 18, 1950, the date recognized as the university’s founding and the reason Founders’ Festival falls in September.

“There was a movement among these women religious orders at that time,” Martone said, “to create a process to educate the women of their order themselves and to take that education out of the hands of other Catholic institutions.”

 While still Dean, Maher simultaneously became the first president of Mercy College when it relaunched as a four-year institution at Dobbs Ferry in 1961 to 1962. Maher also holds the distinction of being Mercy’s first president emeritus.

The inauguration of Mercy's Dobbs Ferry campus, starting from the left, the first person is Sister Mary Jeanne Ferrier, and the fourth is Sister Mary Regina Haughney. Cardinal Spellman is the man in the middle. 

 Sister Mary Jeanne Ferrier (1909-1996): The Negotiator

When the New York State Education Department (NYSED) determined that the Tarrytown property was insufficient for the college expansions that the Sisters envisioned, they issued a deadline: find a suitable site or lose your approval.

 Sister Mary Jeanne Ferrier, Provincial of the Mercy community and the institution’s president at that time, took the assignment.

 What followed was an extraordinary exercise in leadership under pressure. Ferrier surveyed ten potential properties before the Sisters secured the 85-acre Edwin Gould Estate in Dobbs Ferry in 1957 — the campus Mercy occupies today. Purchased in 1958 for $350,000, the property sits on land that was once a Native American village. Known as Agawam, the estate’s main house stood where Mercy Hall now stands, chosen for the same reason Edwin Gould chose it: it commands the highest point on the hill, with a clear view of the Hudson River.

 Financing the move required selling the Tarrytown property, which meant negotiating directly with the Rockefellers. Ferrier initially secured $1.6 million for the estate, with Rockefeller setting a cap of $1.75 million with his attorney as a combination of the fair market value of the property and a charitable contribution to support their location. She also arranged for the Sisters to lease back the property for one dollar per year while construction on the new campus was completed.

 Rockefeller Jr. then asked the Sisters for a “favor” of agreeing to delay the public announcement of the charitable gift until October. Nelson Rockefeller was running for governor that year, and the timing of this announcement would benefit Nelson with Catholic voters (since he was a Protestant) in the final stretch of the campaign. The Sisters ultimately received the capped amount of $1.75 million in shares of Standard Oil stock for their property. Nelson won the governorship and would eventually serve as vice president under President Ford.

Rockefeller Jr. described Ferrier as “wise, able, and gracious” and “quite the business lady.” Martone characterized their relationship as one of genuine mutual regard — developed through an extended correspondence that revealed a more private side of Sister Mary Jeanne’s leadership.

After negotiating the sale of the Sisters’ property in Tarrytown and the acquisition of the Gould Estate in Dobbs Ferry, she oversaw the architectural design and construction of the entire campus. The construction of the Dobbs Ferry campus was constantly behind schedule and wrought with challenges — so much so that Mercy’s first classes had to be held at Our Lady of Victory Academy (now Victory Hall) because the Campus Building (Main Hall) was still being built. 

 “She did not want to share any of [her stress] with the members of her order,” Martone said. “She felt like she had to be strong, positive, and the one who unites everybody and not show any weakness or doubt. And she expressed her weakness and doubt to Rockefeller in letters, and he would give her little pep talks.”

Her final communication with him was an Easter card. She thanked him for everything he had done and addressed him as a friend and a benefactor.

 Sister Mary Constance Golden (1916-1996): Steadying the Institution

 After the Sisters relocated to Dobbs Ferry in 1961 and named the new complex Mount Mercy on the Hudson, a new generation of Sisters began to take then reigns as Mercy sought initial accreditation from Middle States. While Sister Mary Gratia Maher was honored with the presidency when the new campus opened, this was largely a ceremonial recognition given her declining health. Sister Mary Etheldreda Christie became Mercy’s president, with Sister Maureen (Frances Mahoney) as dean. The head of its Board of Trustees became Sister Mary Constance Golden, who succeeded founding chair, Sister Mary Regina Haughney. 

 Golden had entered the order in 1936. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Manhattan College and her master’s and doctorate from Fordham University. Her career followed a path similar to Maher’s — teaching and administration in Catholic schools across New York City, including a posting under Maher at St. Catharine’s Academy. During her tenure at Mercy, besides serving as head of the Board of Trustees, she would also hold the roles of dean of students and director of student personnel services.

 She and her colleagues inherited a college operating under significant financial strain. The Sisters had to borrow funding to build its new complex and had recently taken out a $1 million loan to expand the College Building (Main Hall). Further, the inaugural freshman class had been awarded full scholarships — a decision rooted in institutional ambition, if not fiscal caution. Mercy was tuition-dependent and collecting none.

 “They filled all their spots,” Martone said. “And they felt that the first graduating class, when they go out into the world, Mercy’s reputation is going to rest on them.” Martone explained, “So they wanted to make sure they had a good class and graduated some great alumni, because that would then build the idea that Mercy is great because the alumni are really great. And that was their logic.”

 The financial recovery was slow. By 1969, the Sisters relinquished institutional control and Mercy became nonsectarian in an effort to secure Bundy Aid to keep Mercy financially solvent. As part of this arrangement, the Board of Trustees was reconstituted to include nonsectarian members. Golden would later become an associate professor at Manhattan College from 1970 to 1986 and an archivist for the Sisters of Mercy from 1986 to 1994.

Knowing Where You Come From

 At the close of the presentation, Dr. Amanda Gunning, professor in the School of Education and director of Mercy’s Center for STEM Education, offered a reflection.

 “The Sisters of Mercy started the college as a charitable organization. And although we’re no longer charitable, technically, we’re still serving needy populations.” Gunning continued, “We’re providing a level of education that you can’t get at this price anywhere else. So, I think that we’re still working within the mission and the original Sisters’ vision, so I feel like it’s important to know our roots.”

 Jung Kang Miller, Mercy faculty member in the Literacy and Multilingual Department and associate aean for Academic Affairs at the School of Education, spoke about the which of the Sisters from Dean Martone’s presentation stood out to her the most or was her favorite.

 “The same as [Dean Martone]’s favorite, Sister Mary Jeanne Ferrier,” Miller said. She explained: “Because of how much work she accomplished, and because she really provided all the foundation that current Mercy is built on. She did it all.”

 Martone said his interest in this history began the moment he arrived at Mercy. What started as curiosity about an institution without a fully written record became a book, and then this presentation.

 “When I first started at Mercy as a faculty member, I was really interested in learning about the history of the institution. And there was not a real comprehensive history.” Martone said. He continued, “So, I worked with a colleague who was also a professor here, and we did a book on the history of Mercy. Now that we’re having our 75th anniversary year, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the stories that were only covered in part in that book and elaborate on them. And I just thought that this was a really good story to tell, and it’s also connected to women’s history.”

 Asked if there was one surprising thing he learned in his extensive research, Martone was quick to answer.

 “As I was kind of hinting in that presentation, Sister Mary Jeanne is a bit of my favorite here, and what was really surprising to me was the relationship that she had with Rockefeller Jr..” He continued, “I thought that was a very interesting thing, and that’s not something that’s well known publicly. And it’s kind of this mutual respect that they had for each other through their negotiations, it’s kind of amazing.”

 That mutual respect — between a Sister of Mercy and one of the most powerful men in twentieth-century America — says something about who these women were. They didn’t ask for recognition. They negotiated from principle, built from nothing and quietly shaped an institution that has since educated generations of students who might not otherwise have had the opportunity.