In July 1845, eleven Ursuline nuns arrived in Saint Martin, a village of French and Irish settlers at the northern tip of Brown County. John Baptist Purcell, Bishop of Cincinnati, had urged them to establish a school for young ladies in his diocese because the organization of women founded by Saint Angela Merici in 1535 was known for its skill in educating youth. Julia Chatfield, an Englishwoman, led the group and brought an Irish novice and postulant from Boulogne in northern France. Pauline Laurier joined her with seven French-speaking sisters from the farming area of Beaulieu. The bishop offered them a tract of land from the Virginia Military Land Grant that General John Lytle had deeded to the Diocese, and they came to identify so strongly with their new surroundings that they became known legally as The Ursulines of Brown County.