You need only say, "The Valley" and the heart of every Dominican of St. Catharine, Kentucky experiences a little flutter.  The words give rise to memories of our earliest days.  Our first sisters moving from Bethany to Siena Vale.  An abandoned still house would be the first school and education began on this land in 1822 and continues to this very day.  Fr. R.B. Williams, OP, chaplain at the Motherhouse and Sansbury, reminded us of the appropriateness of using a still house.  It certainly blends in with some of Kentucky's culture and as we know bourbon gets better with age and it never goes bad... something like the Kentucky Sisters.  The community experienced tremendous growth during our years in the valley.  Our friendship with Christopher Simmering began in the valley.  Sisters were sent out to found new establishments in Ohio and Tennessee.  Our land and buildings were used during the Civil War as the sisters went out to the battlefield in Perryville to nurse the soldiers on both sides of the conflict.  The memory of the fire is etched in our very psyche.  It destroyed all that the sisters had built materially but they discovered within themselves a new determination to rebuild so that the mission would continue.  In the Spring following the fire, the valley gave a sign of hope that we still cling to ... the place where the motherhouse had stood was covered with March lilies, which we call jonquils.

When the cars, carrying the "valley pilgrims,"  arrived at the banks of Cartwright Creek, it didn't matter that the creek was