About this collection:

➤ Mary Imelda Ford was born on August 10, 1945 to James A. Ford and Mary Catherine (Kennedy) Ford. She grew up in Fairmont, WV where she had completed nine years of Catholic education beginning with kindergarten at 5-years-old. Mary Imelda Ford earned a partial scholarship to attend the Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy boarding school for a college preparatory education.

Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy was established in 1848 by eight sisters of the Visitation from Baltimore who came to Wheeling at the invitation of the Most Reverend Richard V. Whelan for the purpose of establishing a school for girls. The Order of the Visitation was founded by Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Jane Frances de Chantal in Annecy, Haute-Savoie, France in 1610. The school, originally known as the Wheeling Female Academy, was renamed Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy after Saint Jane de Chantal, the co-founder of the Visitation Order. Classes at the school were partially taught by the cloistered nuns of the order.  The academy remained a boarding school until 1982. After 160 years of operation, the last class graduated on May 31, 2008. 

After senior year (1963), Mary Imelda Ford decided to join the nuns and became a Novitiate in a ceremony officiated by the Right Reverend Monsignor Benjamin Farrell on April 2 in the Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy. The new novice was known as Sister Anne Marie.  On September 8, 1963, Sister Anne Marie entered the Wheeling monastery and became a postulant of the Sisters of the Visitation.

In the spring of 1964, she began her one year of concentrated study of the rules of the Order.  These rules had not changed since its founding in the early 1600's by Bishop Francis de Sales and his friend Jane de Chantal.

Subsequently, Sister Anne Marie attended an all-girls college, The College of Mount St. Joseph on the Ohio River outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. There, she lived with the sisters on the faculty (and other sister-students from at least four other Orders). The summer prior to graduation, she chaperoned a group of students from Mount de Chantal on a six-week tour of Europe for an experience since she was studying to be an art teacher at the Mount. This afforded her the opportunity to see paintings and churches of five European countries. The trip consisted of stops in Italy (Rome, Venice, Florence), Germany (Munich), Switzerland (Montreux, Geneva), France (Paris), and United Kingdom (London). Meanwhile, Sister Anne Marie professed her final vows on April 12, 1969 at Mount De Chantal.  She graduated from the College of Mount St. Joseph in 1970. 

The summer of 1970, Sister Anne Marie Ford participated in a week-long Salesian Conference in West Virginia with nuns from all over the country. For two years she taught Arts & Crafts, Art History, Photography, and Sculpture. Anne Marie Ford took a leave of absence from her role as a nun and teacher. She went home to live with her parents for a time.  She selected to legally change her name from her birth name of Mary Imelda Ford to the name she took on as a nun, Anne Marie Ford. She found a job teaching 7th and 8th graders in a rural school in Mill Creek, WV. Since she had made her final vows, she needed to request an indult of secularization from the Pope, which was granted on February 5, 1974. Anne Marie Ford met her future husband at a retreat in Elkins. The couple married in 1975. Currently, Anne Ford Taylor lives in Corvallis, Oregon.

➤ Interested in this material? Please use our "Ask an Archivist Form" or call 304-232-0244.

▶ Click here to view pdf in full window