St. Bernard Prep School

“St. Bernard Preparatory School is a private, Roman Catholic day school and boarding school in Cullman, Alabama. It is run independently of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama by the Benedictine monks of St. Bernard Abbey, located on the same campus.” (Wikipedia)

“Benedictine Monks came to Alabama from St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in the 1870’s. St. Vincent had been founded in the 1840’s from Metten Abbey in Bavaria, a monastery founded in the eighth century. Most of the early Alabama monks were Bavarian natives and came primarily to serve German-speaking Catholic communities in the State. The town of Cullman was such a community and was settled in 1873 under the leadership of Colonel John G. Kullmann, a German refugee who arrived in America in 1866.

Arriving in Cullman in the 1880’s the monks established St. Bernard Abbey on September 29, 1891, named in honor of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the famous eleventh century French abbot and doctor of the Church. The new community chose its location because of the area’s healthy climate, rapid growth, and access to the mail railroad.

In the same year as the Abbey’s founding, the monks established St. Bernard Preparatory School on the outskirts of the city – on the grounds of the monastery.” (St. Bernard Preparatory School website)