Mother Margaret Hallahan

Mother Margaret Hallahan

The first apostolic congregation founded in England after the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829 emancipated Catholics and allowed the open practice of the Catholic faith was the foundation made in Stone by Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan.  Her love of the Blessed Mother and her interpretation of an authentic Dominican devotion to Mary were incorporated into the rules and customs that became the constitutions of the Dominican Sisters of Stone.   The constitutions written by Mother Margaret were approved by the pope and all subsequent foundations in England and the United States were encouraged to take them as their model.   The foundress of Stone and her successor Mother Francis Raphael Drane were well-known by Dominicans in England and the United States.  Their biographies and the Life of Saint Dominic and Sketch of the Dominican Order, written by Mother Francis Raphael Drane, were read aloud in Dominican refectories from the time they were published right up until the practice of silence at meals was ended in the mid 1970’s.   In 1929 five congregations founded in England were amalgamated into one congregation with Stone as their Motherhouse.  Since then several congregations founded in the United States have merged or been restructured.