The St. Vincent Ferrer School and Parish Records consists of materials related to the history and administration of St. Vincent Ferrer School and St. Vincent Ferrer Parish. Materials include administrative records, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, photographs and photographic material, and ephemera related to students and alumni. The materials were collected by the Dominican Sisters.

The St. Vincent Ferrer Convent School was established in Vallejo, CA in 1870 as a Catholic Free school for girls by five sisters who moved from St. Catherine’s in Benicia. General John Frisbie donated money and land to build the school. St. Vincent’s was the third school opened by the Dominican Sisters in California. As enrollment increased, the need for a new building arose. The grammar and primary classes moved from the old wooden buildings that had been added to the Church in 1890 into a new two-story brick building in 1893 when St. Vincent’s became co-ed. A new, co-educational high school building was completed in 1917. The first school year in the newly constructed three-story boy’s school was briefly interrupted with the outbreak of the Spanish flu. The Dominican Sisters offered to have the school serve as a Naval hospital from October to November 1918, and again, in 1919, from January until early February when there was a second wave of influenza. Sister Eulalia, who had previously been a nurse, along with five other sisters volunteered to care for the women and children who were patients at the hospital. St. Vincent’s High School returned to being an all-girls school in 1968 when the boys moved to the newly built St. Patrick’s High School. St. Vincent’s High School merged with St. Patrick’s High School in 1987. The convent was torn down in 1993-1994 and the sisters moved to a building at St. Patrick’s on Benicia Road in Vallejo and commuted to the school. Several Dominican Sisters remained teachers at the school until 2016 when they permanently moved from Vallejo and joined the congregation in San Rafael, California.

10.55 linear feet

Property rights reside with the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael Archives. For permissions to publish, please contact the Archivist.

This collection is open for research.