Sinsinawa is an unincorporated community in Grant County, Wisconsin , United States . The community is in the Town of Jamestown , and the Town of Hazel Green , one mile north of the border with Illinois . The community is 7.5 miles east of Dubuque, Iowa and 6.5 miles west of the village of Hazel Green, Wisconsin . The town is best known for being the mother house of the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters .
History The community's name means either " rattlesnake " or "Home of the Young Eagle " in Sioux . The first white settler in the area was George Wallace Jones , who purchased land for a lead smelter in 1827 . He soon sold the land to Samuel Mazzuchelli , who subsequently built a men's college in 1846 . Mazzuchelli founded the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters in 1847 . This religious order founded a women's college and high school in Sinsinawa in 1865 .