The daughter of Joseph and Regina Mattingly O’Bryan, Mary Ursula was born July 22, 1905. She began life in the log cabin on her grandfather’s farm in West Louisville, Ky. She attended the West Louisville public school, and when ready for the eighth grade, became a student at Mount Saint Joseph Academy. After graduation in 1924, Mary Ursula entered the novitiate at Mount Saint Joseph. During the postulancy, she was assigned to teach the fifth and sixth grades on campus. Mary Ursula received the Ursuline habit on March 19, 1925, and the name Sister Ursula Marie.
Sister Ursula Marie began her mission apostolate in February 1926, when she was hurriedly sent to St. Edward School in Jeffersontown, Ky., as the substitute teacher for the upper grades. In Kentucky, she also taught at Flaherty, Lebanon (St. Charles High School) Hardinsburg (St. Romuald High School), Louisville (St. Columba), St. Alphonsus, Loretto (St. Francis High School) and Owensboro (Brescia College, and Owensboro Catholic High School as assistant principal). On several of her assignments she was principal and superior. In Nebraska, she taught at Hartington, and St. Bernard Academy in Nebraska City. In 1972, she was assigned to the business office at Mount Saint Joseph. Five years later, she retired and felt free to be herself after 50 years of serious responsibilities. She looked forward to having time for extra prayer, sewing for others, feeding the birds, and creating craftworks. During her first months of retirement she made a detailed plan of the convent cemetery for archival reference. She also wrote some short biographies of Sisters who had been her friends through “ups and downs” over the years.
Sister suffered the debilitating effect of cancer for several years. She became quite ill in February 1989, and was admitted to Mercy Hospital in Owensboro. Wishing to die at Mount Saint Joseph in the presence of the Sisters, Sister Ursula Marie asked to return to the Motherhouse infirmary. Conscious to the end, she died on March 28, 1989. Father Anthony Shonis, chaplain, celebrated the funeral Mass on March 30. Sister’s nephew, Father Henry Cecil, was the homilist. Among the priests present in the sanctuary were Msgr. Aloysius O’Bryan and Father Henry O’Bryan, brothers of Sister Ursula Marie. Her remains are buried in the convent cemetery.