Founded:January 12, 1777 by Father Junipero Serra
Named for: Saint Claire of Assisi
Location: at Santa Clara College on the Alameda, in the city of Santa Clara
| Eighth Mission Founded:January 12, 1777 by Father Junipero Serra Named for: Saint Claire of Assisi Location: at Santa Clara College on the Alameda, in the city of Santa Clara |
After a delay of several months, due to an uprising of the natives at Mission San Luis Obispo, the second mission ordered to hold the San Francisco Bay was founded in Santa Clara. This was the first mission named for a woman, Saint Claire of Assisi, founder of the Poor Clares order on nuns.
Flooding of the nearby Guadalupe River forced the padres to move the mission many times. A third site, with a large adobe church, stood for 34 years until a severe earthquake in 1818 forced the mission to be moved again. Finally, construction on the fifth and present mission site began in 1822.
Shortly after the arrival of the Spaniards many of the native children died from an epidemic of measles. This sad part of Spanish colonization provided the padres with the opportunity to baptize many of the children who were brought to the mission in the hopes of making them well again. Mission Santa Clara led the other mission in baptisms as well as burials. The remains of many neophytes (Christianized Native Americans) are buried in the cemetery next to the mission.
Mission Santa Clara was one of the last missions subject to secularization, in 1836. After some of the mission lands were returned to the church the Franciscans turned them over to the Jesuit Order to be used as the site for the first college in California. Classes at what is now the University of Santa Clara began in 1851.
In 1926 the mission church that had survived more than a hundred years was destroyed in a fire. With only portions of the original adobe walls left standing, the church was rebuilt in 1929 and continues today to serve as the college chapel.