Where 10 Sisters of Charity and 90 of their 94 orphans drowned on September 8, 1900 — the single deadliest location in America's deadliest natural disaster.
Near 69th Street and Seawall Boulevard, Galveston, TX 77551
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public sidewalk and seawall access. The Texas historical marker at the approximate site is free to visit.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat sidewalk along Seawall Boulevard; the approximate site is accessible from the public seawall
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1874 · Largest Single-Location Death Toll from the 1900 Galveston Hurricane · Texas Historical Marker (1994) · Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word — 10 Sisters Lost · America's Deadliest Natural Disaster Site
St. Mary's Orphan Asylum was founded in Galveston in 1867 by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, operating initially at the St. Mary's Infirmary grounds. By January 1874 the orphanage had moved to donated beachfront property on the western edge of the city, at approximately what is now 69th Street and Seawall Boulevard — three miles from the city center, directly on the Gulf of Mexico shore.
At the time of the September 8, 1900, hurricane, the facility housed ten sisters and ninety-four children. As the storm surge rose through the afternoon, the sisters moved the children to the building's second floor. With the water still climbing, each sister cut lengths of clothesline and used them to tie groups of six to eight children to her waist, hoping to keep the children together if the building failed. When the dormitory building collapsed into the surge around 7:30 p.m., all ten sisters and all but three of the children drowned. Their bodies were found in the days following the storm still bound together.
The three survivors — William Murney, Frank Madera, and Albert Campbell — were teenagers who had been swept together into a tree and survived by holding on through the night. Their accounts formed the basis of the most detailed early reporting on the orphanage tragedy.
The 1900 Galveston hurricane killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people and remains the deadliest natural disaster in United States history. The orphanage loss — ten adults and ninety children from a single facility — is the largest single-building death toll from the storm. A Texas historical marker was dedicated at the approximate site in 1994, with descendants of the survivors in attendance. No structure remains; the area is now part of Galveston's developed seawall corridor.
Sources
Reports of paranormal activity at the St. Mary's site have circulated in Galveston since the early twentieth century, grounded in the scale of the loss and the circumstances of the deaths. Ghost City Tours and other Galveston operators document accounts of small children crying near the seawall at night, heard from the sidewalk and from vehicles traveling the boulevard, with no visible source. Some accounts describe the sound of children playing — not distressed — concentrated near the 69th Street marker on still evenings.
A separate set of reports describes impressions of figures in nuns' habits moving along the beach at the water's edge after dark. These accounts appear in Galveston historical ghost-tour material dating to at least the 1970s; the Hotel Galvez, located east along the seawall, incorporates the Sister Katherine narrative into its own tour programming and identifies the same stretch of beach as its focal point.
Ghost City Tours, which has documented the site in published tour itineraries, describes the orphanage loss as one of Galveston's most culturally enduring hauntings — less a collection of individual sightings than a persistent community memory of the 1900 storm's concentrated toll. The historical marker at the site is the primary public acknowledgment of the event; the Catholic Diocese of Galveston-Houston has maintained St. Mary's Infirmary and a successor orphanage organization in the city.
Notable Entities
Walk the Seawall near 69th Street, where a Texas historical marker commemorates the 1900 storm tragedy. A 1994 marker was dedicated at the approximate location of St. Mary's Orphan Asylum with descendants of the three survivors in attendance. Ghost City Tours includes this stop on Galveston haunted walking itineraries.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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