Nestled along the quiet banks of Hardin’s Creek in Marion County, Kentucky, lies a campus that once buzzed with youthful ambition, frontier resolve, and sacred mission. For more than 150 years, Saint Mary’s College was a pillar of Catholic education, weathering fires, epidemics, feuds, and sweeping national changes. This is the story of that college—from its birth in a repurposed whiskey distillery in 1821 to its final closure in 1976. And in true Kentucky fashion, it begins with faith, resourcefulness, and more than a little grit.

I grew up hearing about Saint Mary’s College from my mother, who was raised in the nearby town. For her—and eventually, for me—it wasn’t just a school. It was the heart of a Catholic community that shaped generations.

From Whiskey Barrels to Seminary Benches

Rev. William Byrne, a young Irish priest not long ordained, arrived in frontier Kentucky in 1821 with a singular vision: a school for Catholic boys west of the Appalachians. With the help of fellow priest and Kentucky native Rev. George Elder, Byrne acquired a 311-acre farm known as Mount Mary in Marion County. The site had once housed a whiskey distillery, long since abandoned, and it was here that Byrne began his school.

He didn’t wait for funding or formal buildings. The abandoned distillery became a classroom. Empty whiskey barrels were repurposed as desks. Tuition was deliberately low, and payment in corn, eggs, or livestock was gladly accepted. It was a school of faith and function.

Byrne served as president, teacher, farmer, and traveling missionary. His students learned Latin, logic, and literature—and they labored. One day a week, boys worked on the school’s farm, raising crops and livestock to support the institution.

The 1820s tested Byrne’s resilience. Fires consumed the first two permanent buildings, but he rebuilt both times. He believed deeply in the mission. In just over a decade, he had educated more than 1,200 boys, including Martin John Spalding, who would later become Archbishop of Baltimore.

By the early 1830s, Saint Mary’s College had gained respect across the region. It wasn’t a grand college by Eastern standards, but on the frontier, it was a beacon.

The Nerinckx-Byrne Feud: A Clash of Saints

Every founding story has its tension, and Saint Mary’s College was no exception.

While Byrne was setting up his school at Mount Mary, another powerful figure in Kentucky Catholicism—Rev. Charles Nerinckx—was returning from Europe. Nerinckx, a Belgian missionary and founder of the Sisters of Loretto, had also envisioned a religious institution on that same land.

Before leaving for Europe to raise funds and recruit clergy, Nerinckx had directed the purchase of the Mount Mary tract for a planned boys’ religious order. But during his absence, Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget, the first bishop of Bardstown, granted Byrne permission to begin his school there.

When Nerinckx returned in 1821, he was stunned to find a bustling college already operating on what he considered his land. He contested Byrne’s claim and attempted to either reclaim the property or create a religious order alongside the college. The dispute threatened to fracture the early Church in Kentucky.

Bishop Flaget stepped in. Recognizing the genius and devotion of both men, he negotiated a compromise. Nerinckx’s Sisters of Loretto would relocate to nearby St. Stephen’s Farm—what would eventually become Nerinx, Kentucky. There, the sisters flourished, and Saint Mary’s College retained its foothold. What could have been a division became a dual mission. Boys were educated at Saint Mary’s College. Girls were taught at Loretto. And the Catholic presence in Marion County deepened.

Bishop Flaget: A Steady Hand in a Tumultuous Time

Bishop Flaget’s leadership during the Nerinckx-Byrne feud demonstrated his diplomatic skill and pastoral vision. He saw in Byrne a practical founder and in Nerinckx a spiritual dynamo. Rather than choose sides, he expanded the Church’s influence by supporting both.

When Father Byrne succumbed to cholera in 1833—after ministering to a dying victim—Flaget again acted decisively. He invited the Jesuits of the French Lyons Province to take charge of Saint Mary’s College.

The Jesuit Era and the Birth of Fordham University (1833–1846)

The arrival of the Jesuits brought both academic rigor and spiritual structure. They immediately began transforming the college’s educational model. The curriculum expanded beyond Latin and philosophy to include mathematics, history, science, and modern languages. They insisted on intellectual precision, structured discipline, and a daily routine rooted in prayer, study, and service.

In 1837, Saint Mary’s College received an official charter from the Kentucky legislature, granting it the authority to confer academic degrees—no small feat for a Catholic college operating in a predominantly Protestant state.

Enrollment increased. Students came from across Kentucky and neighboring states. New buildings were erected. Manual labor remained part of the formation model, with students contributing to the farm and campus maintenance as part of their education.

But just as the college seemed to be settling into a new period of growth, a bold decision by the Jesuit leadership would dramatically alter its course—and that of Catholic higher education in the United States.

In 1846, the Jesuits withdrew entirely from Saint Mary’s College.

The reason was not failure, but vision. Jesuit superiors in the United States had turned their focus toward the fast-growing Catholic population in the Northeast, particularly New York City, where waves of Irish and German immigrants were arriving in unprecedented numbers.

That opportunity came in the form of St. John’s College, founded in 1841 in the Bronx by Bishop John Hughes. Just five years after its founding, the Jesuits were invited to take over. They needed their best and most experienced educators—and so they withdrew the entire faculty and leadership from Saint Mary’s College and moved them to New York.

That university would become Fordham University.

Today, Fordham is one of the most respected Jesuit institutions in the country, with more than 16,000 students across campuses in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Westchester. Its commitment to social justice, intellectual rigor, and Catholic values places it among the premier institutions of its kind in the world.

And its story begins, in part, at Saint Mary’s College.

Before Fordham rose in New York, it was born in Kentucky classrooms, chapel prayers, and the disciplined spirit formed on the banks of Hardin’s Creek. Saint Mary’s College was not only a proving ground—it was a gift.

After 1846, the college was administered briefly by the Congregation of Holy Cross, best known today for founding the University of Notre Dame. From 1846 to 1848, the Holy Cross Fathers maintained order and curriculum, but their stay was short. By 1848, the Diocese once again entrusted Saint Mary’s College to diocesan clergy. The college had lost some of its shine, but not its mission.

Holding On Through Hard Times (1848–1871)

Saint Mary’s College continued under diocesan leadership. Enrollment ebbed and flowed. Resources were modest, but the college endured. Alumni from this period include Kentucky Governor J. Proctor Knott and poet Theodore O’Hara. The Civil War and its aftermath placed enormous financial pressure on the college. In 1869, operations ceased temporarily due to declining numbers and funding shortages.

It seemed possible that Saint Mary’s College might never reopen.

Resurrection and Renaissance (1871–1929)

But in 1871, the Congregation of the Resurrection, based in Chicago, breathed new life into the institution. The Resurrectionist Fathers restructured the curriculum and brought fresh energy to the college. They introduced three academic tracks: classical, scientific, and commercial.

Military training began in 1882. Music instruction started in 1883. Byrne Hall was built in 1884, followed by a gymnasium in 1901. Athletics became a source of pride and discipline.

Between 1915 and 1935, the college fielded basketball, baseball, and even boxing teams. The gym was the heart of the campus—not just a site of competition, but community. Locals attended games. Coaches were often priests. Sportsmanship mattered more than the scoreboard. Boys from Catholic families across Kentucky—and beyond—were sent to Saint Mary’s College to mature under its quiet, watchful tutelage.

Seminary Years (1929–1975)

The Great Depression forced another transformation. In 1929, amid economic collapse and declining collegiate enrollment, Saint Mary’s College closed its college division and reemerged as a minor seminary—a preparatory school for boys discerning the priesthood. This version of the school would last nearly five decades. Though the seminary era lacked the collegiate flair and athletic buzz of earlier decades, it nurtured generations of future priests and Catholic lay leaders. Students followed a quiet rhythm: prayer, study, work, reflection. The handball courts became legendary—simple concrete walls behind the gym where faculty and seminarians challenged one another daily, often wagering desserts from the dining hall or simply bragging rights.

While the college’s public profile diminished, its spiritual influence remained deep. Parishes across Kentucky sent their sons to Saint Mary’s Seminary. Many returned as pastors.

The Final Bell of 1976

By the early 1970s, times had changed. Vocations declined. The cost of maintaining the old buildings became too great. Saint Charles High School closed first, in 1970, and just a few years later, in 1976, Saint Mary’s College followed. The loss of both institutions in such close succession signaled the end of an era.

The nearby town of Saint Marys never recovered its former vitality. Stores closed. The community quieted. What had once been a lively hub of Catholic education and rural life faded into memory.

A Lasting Legacy

Though the final bell has long since rung, Saint Mary’s College lives on in memory and stone. In 1980, the historic campus—with its aged Refectory, Columbia Hall, and chapel—was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The old handball courts still stand, echoing faintly with the slap of palms and the laughter of boys long grown.

I was one of those who walked that road—with my friend Fred Mattingly—to play basketball in the gym, where the echoes of dribbled balls and friendly laughter still linger in memory.

To all who passed through Saint Mary’s College: may the echo of Latin prayers, the sounds of farm life, and the memory of those who walked that winding, tree-covered lane never be forgotten. Long live the memory of the town of Saint Marys, my mother’s childhood home that I heard so much about.

A Call to Remember If you or a loved one were part of the story of Saint Mary’s College—whether as a student, teacher, neighbor, or friend—we invite you to share your memories in the comment section. Preserve them. Pass them down. History only stays alive when it’s told.

We’d love to hear from you. If you have stories, photos, or archival materials, reach out to Historic Heartland Trail or your local historical society.

Let’s keep the spirit of Saint Mary’s College alive—for those who knew it, and those who never got the chance.

Part two: The Cornucopia Years

Saint Mary’s College After the Priests Had Left.

I had what you might call a front-row seat to the Cornucopia years at old Saint Mary’s College—though my front row wasn’t a chapel pew or a seminar cushion on the gym floor. No, mine was generally a bar stool—either at Beaven Brothers Store or just a little way down the road at Elder’s. I wasn’t enrolled in any workshops, didn’t quote the Twelve Pathways, and never once got tied to a stranger’s wrist for “String Day.” But I saw plenty. My truck passed by that campus a couple times a week, and if you were paying attention back then—and I was—you could tell something new had taken root in the redbrick buildings where seminarians used to kneel and study.

Every week or so, one or two of them would wander into Beaven Bros. Store and settle in at the end of the bar with a book in hand. They weren’t the rough type, not by a mile—bookish, maybe even a little over-educated for Marion County, but pleasant enough. They’d read quietly, sip on a beer or two, and from time-to-time mutter about whatever passage had just struck them. If you struck up a conversation, they were eager to talk—usually about something inward and philosophical and where they called home. Now over at Elder’s, it was a little different. Starting around 5 o’clock, a steady stream of Cornucopians—vegetarians, mind you—would march down the road from the college to Harold Elder’s back poolroom, where a hot plate and a grill cranked out the best hamburger in Saint Mary (also the only one). Clelland Paris manned the flat top, and it wore him to the nub trying to keep burgers and beers coming. They’d eat, chat, laugh, and after an hour or two, like clockwork, they’d head back up the road—refreshed, full, and once again ready for their vegetarian discipline.

  “Living Love” Comes to Kentucky

Ken Keyes Jr. wasn’t your typical religious figure, and his arrival in rural Kentucky brought with it a language and lifestyle that stood apart from the Catholic rhythms of Saint Mary and Calvary. He was best known at the time for his book Handbook to Higher Consciousness, first published in 1972, which laid out what he called the Twelve Pathways to happiness. A paraplegic from age 25 after contracting polio, Keyes had developed his own version of modern spirituality—combining insights from Eastern traditions, psychological self-help, and a personal mission to help people overcome their emotional “addictions.”

Keyes had previously run his Living Love Center in Berkeley, California, but by the mid-1970s he was looking for a quieter place, away from the distractions and growing costs of the West Coast. Word reached him of the Saint Mary’s College property in Kentucky, now vacant, its halls filled only with silence. Whether the Church sold it directly or through intermediaries, by 1977, Keyes had moved in, his books and papers carried into buildings once filled with Latin grammar and theology.

The renamed Cornucopia Institute was something entirely different than anything Marion County had ever hosted. And it didn’t take long for folks to notice.

Community Reception: Curiosity Meets Caution

At first, the locals didn’t know what to make of it. There were stories—odd ones. Grown men and women seen walking around campus tied together by the wrist. Groups singing chants in the field behind the old gymnasium. A vegetarian cafeteria menu and co-ed living quarters, which, to the more traditional folks of Calvary and Raywick, seemed about one step shy of heresy. Some joked that the “hippies” had come to town. Others weren’t laughing.

One neighbor in particular, Tommy Ray, made no secret of his disapproval. From what older residents say, he thought the entire operation was some kind of cult, and he wasn’t quiet about it. But while there were rumors and raised eyebrows, no real conflict erupted. The Cornucopia folks mostly stayed on their campus, and their message was one of peace and acceptance. They weren’t out to convert the town or pick a fight. They just wanted to be left alone to do their work. Over time, most folks got used to the idea that the old college had become something strange and new.

And it was new—new in every sense of the word.

Inside the Cornucopia Institute: A New Kind of Education

Cornucopia was, at its heart, a residential consciousness center. That meant people came from all over the country—sometimes the world—to live on campus for a few days, a week, or even several months. They didn’t come to study theology or philosophy in the traditional sense. They came to learn how to change their thinking, how to let go of emotional pain, and how to find joy in their lives without conditions.

Core Philosophy

The teachings were built around Keyes’s idea that our unhappiness is caused not by the world, but by our inner demands. In his words, we suffer because of addictions—not to drugs, but to emotional patterns like needing approval, needing control, or needing comfort. “The only thing you need in life is what you already have,” he once wrote. These were things people could unlearn, and he offered tools to help them do just that.

Daily Life on Campus

Participants lived dorm-style in the old college buildings. Men and women shared the space, including some co-ed bathrooms—a decision explained by staff as a lesson in seeing one another as “brothers and sisters.” Everyone was expected to contribute to the upkeep of the campus through cooking, cleaning, and maintenance, a practice known as karma yoga, or the path of selfless service.

Meals were strictly vegetarian, served communally in the campus cafeteria. Still, more than a few students made quiet detours to Elder’s Store for a hamburger and fries after days of lentils and brown rice. A cold beer at Beaven’s wasn’t out of the question either.

Courses and Workshops: String Day and Beyond

Cornucopia offered a range of programs—some just for weekends, others lasting up to three weeks. Names like Highway to Happiness, Joy of Living, and Taking Charge of Your Life reflected the emotional and spiritual aspirations of the teachings.

One of the most memorable practices was “String Day.” On this day, participants were paired up and tied together by the wrist with a four-foot length of cord, spending the entire day—sessions, meals, even bathroom breaks—learning cooperation and mutual awareness.

Another well-known event was The Marathon, a 24- to 36-hour group session involving sharing, games, and emotional breakthroughs. In one workshop on body image, participants openly named and released physical insecurities in a process meant to foster radical acceptance.

By the early 1980s, multi-day workshops cost around $325–$455 (including room and board), while weekend programs ranged from $135–$150. Scholarships and work-exchange options helped make the experience more accessible.

The Move West: Why They Left

By 1982 or 1983, Keyes and his team had made the decision to leave Kentucky. Isolation, limited infrastructure, and a shrinking volunteer base made it difficult to sustain the retreat model. The campus was eventually vacated, and Keyes relocated to Oregon, where he opened Ken Keyes College, continuing his teachings in a new setting.

Once again, Saint Mary’s stood still.

From Consciousness to Confinement: The Prison Years

In 1985, the U.S. Corrections Corporation contracted with the Commonwealth of Kentucky to operate a private prison on the property. In January 1986, the Marion Adjustment Center (MAC) opened as the state’s first for-profit correctional facility.

It began as a minimum-security facility but soon expanded to include a medium-security wing. In 1998, the facility was taken over by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), later renamed CoreCivic.

While some older neighbors had eventually made their peace with Cornucopia’s vegetarianism and strange practices, almost no one in town ever truly accepted what came next. Try as she might, Mrs. Grace Mattingly lived in quiet fear of the prison, and she wasn’t alone.

When it was still just a minimum-security facility, most locals adopted a kind of uneasy truce. Jacky Williams summed it up best over a beer at Elder’s Store one day: “The only difference between those in that prison and us is that they were caught and that we have not been caught yet.”

By the early 2010s, MAC employed over 160 people and housed more than 800 inmates. But in 2013, Kentucky ended its contract, citing policy changes and cost concerns. The facility was shuttered and remains inactive today.

Epilogue: Three Lives, One Campus

What do you call a place that has been, at different times, a seminary, a spiritual retreat, and a prison?

You call it Kentucky.

Saint Mary’s College has lived three distinct lives. Each one reflects a different moment in time, a different way of thinking about people, growth, redemption, and community. The Catholics saw it as a place to train the mind and sanctify the soul. The Cornucopia crowd saw it as a place to heal the heart and open consciousness. The prison system saw it as a place to house and rehabilitate—at least in theory.

There’s no telling what will become of it next. But if walls could talk, the stories they’d tell would stretch from Latin recitations to meditation chants to iron doors locking shut.

And all of it happened here—on the quiet road that winds through Marion County’s hills, where Saint Mary’s College once stood proud.

All I—and a lot of other folks around here—really wish, is that we could be welcome to visit the grounds of Saint Mary’s College as we once knew it. Not locked behind fences or marked by years of disuse, but open—like it used to be. A place where you could walk the tree-lined paths, hear your footsteps echo across the old stone walkways, and feel, for just a moment, the spirit of the college that shaped so many lives. Not just a building, but a landmark in the heart of Marion County—quiet, enduring, and worth remembering.

Part Three: They Were Not Left Behind

The Quiet Reburial of Saint Mary’s College Cemetery

This is the third and final story in a series I’ve written about Saint Mary’s College in Marion County, Kentucky. The first two covered the college’s founding, its long legacy of forming priests and educators, and its eventual transformation into an unused prison now owned by CoreCivic. It feels only right to end the series with this account of the 1980 reinterment—the quiet transfer of the college’s cemetery to Saint Charles Church, a parish long intertwined with the seminary’s history. If the closing of the college marked the end of an era, then this respectful reburial offered both a final chapter for the Resurrectionist Fathers and a gesture of lasting care for those who served, lived, and died on that hill.

I didn’t watch the coffins being exhumed, but I remember when it happened. It was the summer of 1980, and there was talk in the stores—Elder’s, Beaven Bros., and out on the benches in front of the old post office. The cemetery at Saint Mary’s College was being cleared. Quietly. Respectfully. No headlines. No procession. Just a solemn transfer—from one piece of holy ground to another. From the hill where the college had stood, to the cemetery beside Saint Charles Church a few miles down the road. A plot was selected near the front of the graveyard, close to where the old convent once stood. A photo of the memorial is included in this post.

The reburial wasn’t just about making room. It was about not forgetting.

Saint Mary’s College had been closed for four years by then. After 150 years of shaping priests and young Catholic minds, the last bell had rung, and the classrooms had gone still. But those buried on that hill—priests, brothers, a professor and his wife, even a young boy—they couldn’t be left behind while the grounds became something else entirely. A new way of life had taken over the old buildings, but the Church, for all her faults, still knows how to tend to her dead.

I walked that cemetery recently—down the row where their names are now etched in granite and stone. Some were men of letters. Others, men of silence. Brother Dudzinski may never have taught a class, but I’d bet he knew every shovel on that campus by name. The Lesouskys? They lived and died in service to the school. Their reburial wasn’t just about moving remains—it was a gesture of continued belonging.

Among those reinterred were clergy, students, faculty, and laymen who made up the lifeblood of the college. Some had stories that survived in family memory. Others were rediscovered only when the records were pulled.

I asked around and combed the archives to see if any members of the old Hayden family—a pillar of early Catholic Kentucky—were buried at the college. I couldn’t find a single one. Not in the priest’s lot, not among the laymen. Plenty of Hayden’s rest in Marion County’s cemeteries, but none, at least by name, made that last journey from the college hill to Saint Charles in 1980.

In the end, the reburial was done quietly—not as an act of forgetting, but of reverence. They were not abandoned when the bell rang for the last time at Saint Mary’s College. They were gathered up and carried—not far, but far enough to remind us that ground matters. Memory matters. A name on a stone still means something in these parts.

They taught here. They prayed here. They worked and died here. If you ever walk the cemetery at Saint Charles, it’s good to remember the ones who kept Saint Mary’s College going. And now, thanks to someone’s good sense in 1980, they rest here.m

A Final Act of Remembrance As a closing tribute, I’ve compiled the most complete register I could find of those reinterred in 1980. This list doesn’t just mark where they now lie—it affirms that they were not forgotten. Names carved in stone endure, and here, on this page, they speak again.

Register of Reinterments from Saint Mary’s College Cemetery

Transferred ca. 1980 to Saint Charles Church Cemetery and Saint Rose Priory.

Faculty and Family Reinterred at Saint Charles

• Prof. Alphonsus Lesousky – Lay faculty; knighted by the Pope; longtime professor. ( I looked it up; He was knighted by the Pope.)
• Lavinia Lesousky – His wife; supporter of the college.
• Joseph Lesousky – Their son; died young.

Clergy Reinterred at Saint Charles

• Rev. William Byrne – Former college president.
• Rev. Eugene Maguire – Educator and theologian.
• Rev. David Fennessey – Faculty member.
• Very Rev. Michael Jagłowicz, CR – College rector.
• Rev. Francis Jagłowicz, CR – Resurrectionist.
• Rev. Cornelius Mellen, CR – Faculty and missionary.
• Rev. Edward Waechter, CR – Faculty.
• Rev. Fabian Dietrich, CR – Administrator and professor.

Laymen Reinterred at Saint Charles

• Judge R.M. Kearney – Prominent Catholic judge; died 1877.
• James Bolger – Lay associate; died 1884.
• Kenny Moore – Lay associate; died 1890.

Students Reinterred at Saint Charles

• Hilary Clark – Died 1833.
• Thomas Mills – Died 1849.
• Richard Drury – Died 1852.
• George Luckett – Died 1869.

Religious Brothers Reinterred

Reinterred at Saint Charles

• Brother Joseph Arbus, CR
• Brother August Schwaba, CR
• Brother Angelo Segatore, CR
• Brother Stanislaus Dudzinski, CR

Reinterred at Saint Rose Priory

• Brother Joseph Barber, CR – The only brother reinterred at Springfield