Mary MacKillop small yellow cottage now known as Mary MacKillop cottage was originally built as a miner's house around 1870. It was bought by the church and incorporated into the church school in 1882 and then in 1897, Sister Mary MacKillop had the cottage and some of the school converted to a convent for the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart who worked in New Zealand and Australia. In 1897, Bishop Maher of Port Augusta arranged for the Sisters of St Joseph to take charge of the St Anacletus Catholic Day School at Petersburg (now Peterborough). MacKillop founded a convent
Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana Thralls to Bishop Simon Bruté of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Vincennes for a sum of fifteen dollars. Bruté was concerned with establishing a Catholic mission for the surrounding Terre Haute area and built a small frame church, the first in Vigo County. In 1840, Saint Mother Theodore Guerin arrived in Saint Mary-of-the-Woods with several companions and found a dense forest with few buildings. There she established the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, a Roman Catholic congregation of women. Originally, the Thralls family provided housing for the sisters. As the Sisters of Providence grew in number, the town of