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LOREtto
Welcome to LOREtto, a blog created by Loretto Heritage Center to share insights into the rich history of the Loretto Community. Learn more about our Heritage Center and archives.
Musings of a Summer Intern
By Grant Stroud The Heritage Center was excited to welcome Grant Stroud as our 2024 Summer Intern. Grant came to us from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where his is working towards a Master’s Degree in Library…
Wish You Were Here: Loretto History in Postcards
Most everyone has received postcards from friends having fun while traveling to beautiful and interesting places, and hopefully we’ve had the opportunity to send a few, as well. Postcards are an immediate, brief form of correspondence and a quick and…
Seeking Home—Corpus Christi—Mystical Body
The Kentucky settlers and the Indigenous Peoples they displaced have a common story—they were almost all refugees, which means for one reason or another they needed to leave where they were living because times were hard. The Native Peoples had…
A sneak peek at the Loretto Heritage Center oversized photo collection
At the Loretto Heritage Center, I have had the pleasure of getting to learn about the amazing history that surrounds the Sisters of Loretto. I have been one of the archival assistants here for over two years. I have worked…
Polyglot Perspectives: Archiving Loretto’s Multilingual Collections
Imagine I handed you a document and instructed you to file it in its proper place. What’s the first thing you might do? Hopefully, you would read through the document to determine its author, contents, and purpose. Knowing who wrote…
12 Days of Christmas in the Archives
Happy holidays! It is once again time for the Heritage Center’s annual “12 Days of Christmas” spree. If you did not follow along on our Facebook page, all of the posts can be viewed below. “12 Days of Christmas” posts…
The Secret Life of Photographs
I bet that at some point you have looked at an unlabeled photograph and wondered about what exactly its story might be. The classic who, what, when, where, and why are all common questions while considering an image. Within that…
Lucia Perea: Spotlight on a New Mexican Sister
Did you know that September 15th through October 15th is Hispanic Heritage month? This annual celebration began in 1968 as “Hispanic Heritage Week” and was later extended to a month in 1988. I’m taking the opportunity to reflect on the…
Exploring the School Photograph Collection, State-by-State
After more than a year of work, the digitizing of the school photographs from Loretto schools in the United States is finally complete! Soon I will begin work on the schools abroad, but before I do that, I thought I’d…
5×5 Sister-Sisters
Browsing through Loretto’s database of Sisters and Co-members, it is fascinating to see how many members had blood relatives who also joined the community. Five family groupings in particular stand out because they are sets of not two, but five…
Representations of the Loretto Staircase Mystery
Archives are full of primary sources that answer historical questions, and the archives at the Loretto Heritage Center are no exception. The archives hold annals, correspondence, annual reports, photographs, journals, audio tapes, and much more that help to answer researchers’…
Glimpses of Loretto’s Agricultural Past
While the Loretto Heritage Center contains a lot of archival papers that document Loretto’s past, one aspect that is difficult to see in the archives is the history of agriculture at the Motherhouse and other convents. Perhaps this is because…