Home > Carnegie Center > Arizona Women's Hall of Fame > Inductees > Otero, Sister Clara
Sister Clara Otero
1850 - 1905
Inducted in 1988
Gabriella Martinez Otero was born in Tucson in 1850 when southern Arizona
was still a part of the Republic of Mexico. Her parents, Senor Manuel Otero
and his wife, Senora Clara Martinez de Otero, had just moved to the “Old
Pueblo” from their hacienda at Tubac where the Otero family
had lived for several generations. According to family research, their
ancestor, Don Jose de Otero, had come from Spain to Rosario, Mexico, in
1732. His son, Don Torevio, migrated north to the frontier province known
as Pimeria Alta, received the first recorded land grant in what is now
Arizona, and was one of the colonizers of Tubac. The Otero family was prominent
in southern Arizona.
When Manuel Otero moved his family north to Tucson, he constructed one
of the first houses built outside the walls of the old presidio. A few
years later, the United States and Mexico negotiated the Gadsden Treaty
and Tucson became a part of a vast area known as New Mexico Territory.
As a young girl, during the Civil War, Gabriella saw the creation of Arizona
Territory in 1863.
Gabriella Otero was a young woman of twenty when the first nuns, the
Sisters of St. Joseph, arrived in Tucson in 1870 to open the Sisters Convent
and Academy for Females. Under the leadership of Sister Monica of the Sacred
Heart, the six women had traveled to their new assignment via California,
from their mother house in St. Louis, Missouri. Following the southern
overland route from west to east, they had traveled to the Yuma Crossing
and along the Gila River to the Pima villages, then to Tucson – some
200 strange, difficult miles for a group unused to the Southwest. Tucson
gave them a rousing reception. The town was illuminated with torches and
the flash of fireworks, bells pealed, and the welcoming parade of citizens,
headed by four priests, met the nuns. Gabriella may have been in
the crowd that greeted the Sisters of St. Joseph. She soon became well
acquainted with them and their charitable works. Other nuns came and schools,
orphanages, and hospitals were started in several places in Arizona Territory.
On August 15, 1877, Gabriella was one of four young Hispanic women who
entered the newly-formed novitiate of Mt. Saint Joseph located at the base
of the mountain about one mile west of Tucson. For Gabriella, her time
of probation passed quickly at the little adobe novitiate. She and the
other young women assisted in teaching children from the nearby ranches
that were west of the Santa Cruz River. In 1880, she took final and perpetual
vows and chose the religious name of Sister Clara of the Blessed Sacrament.
Sister Clara taught school, and on weekends, joined other teaching Sisters
to relieve the nursing Sisters at St. Mary’s Hospital. She resided
at St. Joseph’s Academy in its original location by the Placita and
later at the larger institution on 15th Street. In the building, nuns instructed
students in a wide range of basic subjects with extra courses in
art, music, and needlework. Sister Clara taught Spanish, drawing and painting,
and gave instruction on the piano, harp, guitar, and violin.
Besides the formal lessons she gave in drawing and painting, Sister Clara
taught art throughout the school. In the primary classes, one young pupil
was impressed with her Spanish accent as she would say, “Do eet these
way.” That same pupil remembered Sister Clara as a very gentle, holy
person who quietly went about her duties.
According to a family tradition, when Sister Clara visited her family
at Tubac, she not only taught her nieces and nephews but also gathered
the Indian children of the area around her to learn prayers and precepts
of the Catholic faith.
Sister Clara was in poor health for many years, yet still tried to attend
to every duty of her charge and to assist at all community exercises. In
the last years of her life, she took care of the Academy chapel. She died
at St. Joseph’s Academy in Tucson on September 4, 1905, in the 28th
year of her religious life, at age fifty-six.
Sister Clara Otero is remembered as one of the first young Arizona women
to enter a religious order, the Sisters of St. Joseph.
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