In 1883, Mother Stanislaus Leary of Rochester, New York stopped in Kansas en route to Arizona, and opened a mission which would develop into the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia. In August 1887, four Sisters of St. Joseph were commissioned to go from Concordia, Kansas, to open a parochial school at Abilene, Kansas, at that time in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Leavenworth. In the fall of 1887, word was received from Rome that the state of Kansas had been divided into dioceses. At the direction of Bishop Fink, who did not wish to lose the sisters from his diocese, the Abilene sisters constituted themselves a separate congregation with an act of incorporation of March 25, 1888. The following year the Right Rev. L. M. Pink, Bishop of Leavenworth, decided that these Sisters should belong to his diocese exclusively, and in so doing they became the nucleus of a new diocesan congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph, having their motherhouse established at Abilene, under the title of Mount St. Joseph's Academy.