After a fire forced the closure of St. John’s School in 1845, the Sisters of Charity left Frederick
for their convent in Emmitsburg. They were replaced by 11 cloistered Sisters of Visitation who
travelled from Georgetown to run the school. According to school tradition, the boarding
students who lived at the school were upset to lose their beloved Sisters of Charity and went on
a hunger strike to protest the change.
The school story holds that local Frederick residents welcomed to the Visitation sisters by
bringing them dinner, including a dessert of apple dumplings. The Visitation sisters used the
dessert to persuade the upset students to give up their hunger strike and “sweeten their
disposition.” The tactic worked and it became a tradition at the school.
The tradition holds that on the last Friday in September, the students gathered apples from the
trees growing in the courtyard. The nuns then used the apples to prepare dumplings and ice
cream for the student body. The tradition spanned the life of the school, reinvented and
reinvigorated after the Visitation nuns left the school in 2005. With the students upset, once
again, about the loss of the three remaining nuns, the administration reinstated the tradition.
