During February 1891, St. Francis Hall, the first Catholic school in King County, opens in downtown Seattle in a new building located at 6th Avenue and Spring Street. Sixty students attend the first classes. Father Francis Xavier Prefontaine (1838-1909), leader of the Catholic congregation in Seattle since 1870, is the force behind the founding of the school. St. Francis Hall was taken over by Jesuits who went on to establish Seattle University.
Soon after classes started, Father Prefontaine realized that the undertaking was too much for him, and when Fall classes began, he turned it over to the Jesuits. Jesuit Father Victor Garrand and Father Adrian Sweere, recently arrived from a mission at Yakima in Eastern Washington, began classes at the renamed Immaculate Conception Church on September 1, 1891.
The school year began with 90 pupils increasing within a week to 110 boys and girls.
Sources:
Walt Crowley, Seattle University: A Century of Jesuit Education (Seattle: Seattle University, 1991), 23, 25.
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