The Catholic Church in Chicago, 1673-1871; an historical sketch

Table Of Contents

EARLY MISSIONARY VISITORS - - - - THE PASTORATE OF FATHER St. Cyr, 1833-1834 BisHOP BRUTE AND THE MISSION OF CHICAGO - THE PASTORATE OF FATHER ST. Cyr, 1834-1837 BISHOP QUARTER . - - - = - BisHoP VAN DE VELDE - - - = = BisHop O’REGAN - - - - = .

BisHop DuGGAN - - - e S -

BisHoPp FOLEY AND THE FIRE OF 1871 - -

Introduction

The present year, 1921, is the fiftieth since Chicago was laid waste by a conflagration which has passed into history as the extreme instance of public calamities of the kind. The amazing swiftness with which the city retrieved its losses and stood erect on its feet again has almost made us forget what a calamity it was. And yet, though to the Chicagoans who followed with bated breath its remorseless trail of destruction it seemed a catastrophe tremendous beyond words, the Fire of 1871 is now recognized, not paradoxically, to have been a thing that accelerated, though it checked for a time, the victorious advance of the City of the Lakes. But calamity or blessing, the event was and always will remain epochal in the history of the municipality. A line of cleavage was then and there set up between the Chicago that. was and the Chicago that was to be. Pre- Fire Chicago is an outstanding historical unit, with color, atmosphere and individuating lines quite its own. Even so, in the story of Catholic origins and growth in Chicago a line of demarcation is drawn across the record by the event of 1871. The incidents prior to it fill out and cireumscribe the pioneer period of that fascinating story and as such may be dealt with by the historian as.a unified whole. It is this conception which has led the author to limit his sketch by the Fire of 1871, for he finds in that obvious turning-point of local history the logical end of a narrative which purposes to recount the beginnings only and not the mature development of the Catholic i in Chieago.

xX INTRODUCTION

Within the compass of this brief sketch will be found compressed, it is believed, all the essential facts of Chicago Catholic history between the limits named. Where possible, recourse has been had to primary sources of information. In particular, the Archdiocesan Archives of Saint Louis, the Archives of Saint Louis University, and the Catholic Archives of America at Notre Dame University, have been drawn upon for pertinent material of value. Where the author has had to lean largely on secondary authorities as in Chapter VIII, he has felt less secure. The scale of treatment as regards the various topics varies according to the shifting measure of available material. Thus, the pastorate of Father St. Cyr, our knowledge of which has been so much enlarged through his correspondence with Bishop Rosati but recently brought to light, is treated in detail. On the other hand, the meagreness of the data available in regard to Bishop O’Regan’s episcopate has led the author to eke out this section of the narrative by a rather particularized account of the beginnings of the Holy Family parish, concerning which much first-hand material of interest happened to be within reach.

Chapters I, II and IV, and the greater part of Chapter VII have appeared in the Illinois Catholic Historical Review, July, October, 1918 and April, 1919, while Chapter III has been published in the Saint Lowis Catholic Historical Review, October, 1919. To the editors of these magazines the author makes grateful acknowledgment for the privilege of reproduction.

St. Lows Unversity, August 14, 1921.

James Marquette, missionary-explorer of the Society of Jesus. Photograph from the heroic-sized statue by the Florentine sculptor, Signor Gaetano Trentanove, which represents Wisconsin in Statuary Hall, the Capitol, Washington, being the State’s tribute to the man who with Louis Joliet discovered the Mississippi at the junction of the great waterway with the Wisconsin near Prairie du Chien, June 17, 1673.

Chapter I

No other city of the Middle West traces its historical beginnings more remotely into the past than-.does Chicago. Its civie organization dates indeed only from the third decade of the nineteenth century; but long before the close of the seventeenth century the locality that was to see its growth had found a place in the permanent record of the times. As early as 1688 the name of the city had been written into the geography of the day, Franquelin’s famous map of that year showing ‘‘Fort Chicagou’’ on the site of the future metropolis; and this, thirteen years before Cadillac founded Detroit, seventy-six before Laclede set up his trading-post in St. Louis and a hundred before Denham and Patterson platted the village that was to develop into Cincinnati. The distinction that attaches to remoteness of origin is not to be denied to the great metropolis of the Middle West.

To pick up, then, the first threads in the religious history of Chicago, one must, as when he seeks to trace 4 its secular origins, grope in a distant and shadowy past. In particular, the story of Catholicism in the metropolis earries us back for its opening pages to the first emergence of the locality into the light of history. As it happened, all the early white visitors to the site of Chicago ‘were of the Catholic faith; and with their coming were forged, it may be said, the first links of association between the Catholic church and the future city. One may not determine at this late date who of white men were the first to arrive at the mouth of the Chicago River. True, the distinction has been claimed for that picturesque figure on the stage of early Western history, Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle; but no evidence sufficient to establish his supposed visit of 1671 on anything even like an historical basis has ever been advanced.. Not the empire-builder, but an humble soldier of the cross is the first figure that we are able to recognize with anything like certainty through the mists that hang over the day-break of Chicago history.

Two years after the alleged visit of La Salle to the marshy prairie-land that has since become Chicago, the missionary-explorer Father James Marquette arrived on the scene. On June 17, 1673, Marquette and Joliet discovered the Mississippi at its junction with the Wisconsin. The two then descended the great waterway as tar as the Arkansas, whence, after a brief stay, they

*“<Tt is claimed that he [La Salle] discovered the Illinois River also and was the first of white men to visit the place where Chicago now stands—but the evidence does not warrant the assumption.’? E. G. Mason, Chapters from Illinois History, Chicago, 1901, p. 46. La Salle’s alleged visit of 1671 to Illinois appears to have been a fiction invented by his friends. See Atyorp, The Illinois Country, 1920, p. 78.

started on their homeward journey. With their canoes directed up the Mississippi they proceeded as far as the Illinois, into which they turned. At the village of the Kaskaskia Indians situated on the Illinois at a place not yet definitively identified, Marquette set foot for the first time, as far as we have record, on the soil of the future commonwealth of Illinois. Finding the Indians in a receptive mood, he promised to return at the first opportunity and plant a mission in their midst. Then, resuming their journey, Marquette and Joliet continued to ascend the Illinois until they reached the Desplaines, which they entered, portaging thence to the Chicago River and so reaching Lake Michigan over the blue waters of which they voyaged to Green Bay.

Marquette redeemed his pledge to evangelize the Kaskaskia. Leaving the Mission of St. Francis Xavier on October 25, 1674, with the village of the Kaskaskia for his objective, he journeyed partly by land, partly by water, along the west shore of Lake Michigan, in company. with two French voyageurs, Pierre Porteret and Jacques Le Castor. He arrived December 4 at the mouth of the Chicago River, broken in health and unable to proceed to his journey’s end. After a stay here of some days, his companions built for him a rude shelter on the west fork of the south branch of the Chicago River, at a distance of about five miles (two leagues) from its outlet into Lake Michigan. Here Marquette lived from December 14, 1674 to March 30, 1675, busying himself with his devotions and with the composition of memoirs of his journeys, while his companions hunted turkey, deer and buffalo on ground now covered by the world’s,fourth largest center of popula-

Marquette at Ohicago, 1674-1675

‘osBorTyO ‘s}oI1]G WLOg.rVoCL pues swepy ye surprmg ozoenbavyy oy} Fo oouvtyue oy} Sutddoy [reNovw “vy “H Aq Sjolpol-seq JO Setios B WOIT “GLOT ‘youeyy ‘osez1od oSvotyH oy} 38 oWoNbivyT days in his cabin on the bleak prairie, occur the following paragraphs, memorable as the record, in his own

OF LAKE MICHIGAN, JAN. 2, 1902. THIS REMARKABLE PROPHECY MADE 234 YEARS AGO IS NOW BEING FUL- FILLED. THE END OF ROBEY STREET IS THE HIS- TORIC ‘‘HIGH GROUND’’ WHERE MARQUETTE SPENT THE WINTER 1674-1675. TO!) DOW AND, —SUEEER EVERYTHING FOR SO GLORIOUS AN UNDERTAKING.’’ Marquette’s Journal. HRECTED SATURDAY, SEPT. 28, 1907, BY THE CITY OF CHICAGO AND CHICAGO ASSOCIATION OF COMMERCE.

This Marquette memorial cross was maliciously destroyed a few years ago, but has since been replaced by a new one, erected by the Willey Lumber Company.

John Huston Finlay, the educator, pictures thus a visit which he paid to this Marquette cross.

““In the dusk of an autumn day, I went out to find the place where the novena had worked the miracle of his healing. As i have already intimated, few of all the hundred thousands there in that great. city have had any consciousness of the background of French heroism and suffering and prevision in front of which they were passing daily, but I found that the policeman and watchman on the railroad near the ruins knew at least of the great black cross which stands by that drab and sluggish water, placed there in memory of Marquette and Joliet.

“<The bit of high ground where the hut stood is now surrounded by great looming sheds and factories which were entirely tenantless when I found my way through a long unlighted and unpaved street in the direction of the river. The cross stood, in a little patch of white, black as the father’s cowl [sic] against the night with its erescent moon. I could not make out the inscription on the river-side of the monument, and, seeing a signal lantern tied to a scow moored to the bank near by, I untied it and by its light was able to read the tribute of the city to the memory of the priest and explorer who first of white men had passed that way having travelled, as it recites, ‘two thousand, five hundred miles’in canoes in one hundred and twenty days.’ The bronze plate bears a special tribute to the foresight words, of the first extended sojourn of a Catholic priest on the site of Chicago.

“Having camped near the portage, two leagues up the river, we resolved to winter there, as it was impossible to go further, since we were too much hindered and my ailment did not permit me to give myself much fatigue. Several Ilinois passed yesterday on their way to carry their furs to nawaskingwe. We gave them one of the cattle and one of the deer that Jacque had killed on the previous day. I do not think that I have ever seen any Savages more eager for French tobacco than they . They came and threw beaver skins at our feet, to get some pieces of it; but we returned them, giving them some pipefuls of the tobacco, because we had not yet decided whether we would go farther.

Chachagwessiou and the other Ilinois left us, to go and join their people and give them the goods that they had bought, in order to obtain their robes. In this they act hke the traders, and give hardly any more than do the French. I instructed them before their departure, deferring the holding of a council until this spring, when I should be in their village. They traded us three fine robes of ox-skins for a cubit of tobaceo; these were very useful to us during the of Joliet, but it commemorates first of all the frail body and valorous soul of Father Marquette, the first European within the bounds of the city of Chicago. I wish there might be written on maps, in that space that is shown between the Chicago and the Desplaines, or the ‘Divine River’ as it was sometimes called, the words ‘Portage St. Jacques.’ That were a fitter canonization than to put his name among the names of cities, steamboats on the lake or tobaccos, as is our custom in America.

‘¢The erescent moon dropped behind the shadows that now line the portage ‘like a somber forest,’ but it is only a few steps through the darkness back into the light and noise of the city of more than \two million people.’’? FinuAy, The French in the Heart of America, p. 258.

EARLY MISSIONARY VISITORS 7 winter. Being thus ,rid of them we said the Mass of the

Conception. After the 14th my disease turned into a bloody flux.

Since we addressed ourselves to the Blessed Virgin Immaculate and commenced a novena with a Mass— at which Pierre and Jacque, who do everything they can to relieve me, received Communion, — to ask God to restore my health — my bloody flux has left me, and all that remains is a weakness of the stomach. I am beginning to feel much better and to regain my health.

The North wind delayed the thaw until the 25th of March, when it set in with a South wind. On the very next day, game began to make its appearance. We killed 30 pigeons, which I found better than those down the great river; but they are smaller, both old and young. On the 28th, the ice broke up, and stopped above us. On the 29th, the waters rose so high that we had barely time to decamp as fast as possible, putting our goods in the trees, and trying to sleep in a hillock. The water gained on us nearly all night, but there was a slight freeze and the water fell a little, while we were near our packages. The barrier has just broken, the ice has drifted away: and, because the water is already rising, we are about to embark to continue our journey.

The Blessed Virgin Immaculate has taken such care of us during our wintering that we have not lacked provisions and have still remaining a large sack of corn with some meat and fat. We also lived very pleasantly, for my illness did not prevent me from saying holy Mass every day. We were unable to keep Lent, except Fridays and Saturdays.

We started yesterday and traveled three leagues up the river without finding any portage.®”

* Jesuit Relations, (Thwaites ed. 59: 173-181). ‘‘There is no monument of him [Marquette] so interesting and pathetic as his unfinished letter during his last visit to the land of Lllinois....

Another account of Father Marquette’s residence on the banks of the Chicago River in the winter of 1674-75 is to be found in a contemporary narrative by the missionary’s Superior, Father Claude Dablon.

“He set out for this purpose in the month of November, 1674, from the Bay of the Fetid [Green Bay] with two men, one of whom had already made that voyage with him. During a month’s navigation on the Ilinois lake [Lake Michigan], he was pretty well: but as soon as the snow began to fall, he was again seized with the dysentery, which forced him to stop in the river which leads to the Ilinois. Then they raised a cabin and spent the winter, in such want of every comfort that his illness constantly increased; he felt that God had granted him the grace that he had so often asked, and he even plainly told his companions so, assuring them that he would die of that illness, and on that voyage. To prepare his soul for its departure, he began that rude wintering by the exercises of St. Ignatius, which, in spite of his great bodily weakness, he performed with deep sentiments of devotion and great heavenly consolation; and then spent the rest of his time in colloquies with all heaven, having no more intercourse with

The larger portion of it was written in Marquette’s winter camp at the bleak portage within the limits of Chicago. It would be very fitting should it find its final abiding place in the city of whose early history it is a priceless and unique memorial.’’ MASON, op. cit., p. 35. That Marquette while wintering on the Chicago River occupied himself in writing memoirs of his voyages is stated in a contemporary letter (dated Oct. 10, 1675) from the Jesuit Cholenee published in Rochemonteix, Les Jesuites de la Nouvelle France Aw XVII Siecle, 3: 606. For the argument that Marquette wintered on the Calumet and not on the Chicago River, see WILLIAM HENRY LEE, The Calumet Portage, in Transactions of the Illinois Historical Society, 1912; also ANDREAS, History of Chicago, 1:46. That Marquette used the Chicago River portage on his return journey with Joliet from the Mississippi is indicated in his Journal, Jesuit Relations, 59: 181.

= r? * * ~ s a 7 p s a > a . a ‘ 1 < rp < . ee on . 7 . t , w - , ' n s — t ts ay p nf

The third page of Marquette ’s autograph Journal now resting in the Archives of Saint Mary’s College, Montreal. The missionary’s own account of his historic wintering of 1674-1675 on the site of Chicago, the inaugural episode in the life-story of the metropolis. It appears to be all but certain that the portion of the Journal reproduced above was composed amid the incidents it records, and may thus lay claim to the distinction of being the earliest written document ever put together within the limits of Chicago. (Rochemonteix, 8. J., Les Jeswites de la Newvetle France Au XVIT Siecle, 3:606). Courtesy of Burrows Brothers, Cleveland.

earth, amid these degerts, except with his two companions whom he confessed and communicated twice a week, and exhorted as much as his strength allowed. Some time after Christmas, in order to obtain the grace not to die without having taken possession of his beloved mission, he invited his companions to make a novena in honor of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. Contrary to all human expectations he was heard, and recovering, found himself able to proceed to the Illinois town as soon as navigation was free; this he accomplished in great joy, setting out on the 29th of March.*”

The accounts just cited, virtually contemporaneous with the incidents recorded, are documents of priceless value to the historian, supplying as they do the very first pages in the religious history of Chicago. The spiritual functions discharged by Father Marquette during the winter of 1674-1675 are the earliest recorded ministrations of a clergyman within the limits of the future metropolis. Thus, he said the first Mass on the site of Chicago, that of the Immaculate Conception, on or within a day or two of the octave of the feast, December 15, 1674. Moreover, he was the first priest known to have heard confessions, administered the Eucharist and imparted religious instruction in that locality. We are within the limits of sober fact when we affirm that in the little cabin by the river-bank in which he discharged these acts of the ministry on behalf of his faithful attendants, Pierre Porteret and Jacques Le Castor, the Catholic Church in Chicago first saw the light of day.

‘Suwa, Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, p. 54. The text of Marquette’s Journal seems to make it clear that he resumed his journey towards the Kaskaskia on March 30.

Olaude Allowez, 1677

On March 30, 1675, Marquette bade good-bye to his winter-quarters on the Chicago River and resumed his journey to the Kaskaskia village. Here, despite his failing strength, he laid the foundation of the Mission of the Immaculate Conception, -destined to stand out in history as the spot where civilization and Christianity made their first rude beginnings in the Mississippi Valley. Then, his life-work accomplished, he set his face once more towards the region of the Upper Lakes. With his life fast ebbing away, he toiled along the familiar route by the Illinois, Desplaines and Chicago rivers to Lake Michigan. Then, skirting the foot of the Lake, he made his way painfully up its east shore to a point near the present Ludington, Michigan, where on May 18, 1675, he died among his faithful Indian attendants, leaving behind him the aroma of a singularly blameless life and a record of achievement that will ever loom large in the history of the discovery and exploration of the New World.

Two years after Marquette’s wintering on the banks of the Chicago River, another Jesuit, in the person of Claude Allouez, entered the same river from Lake Michigan. Towards the end of October, 1676, that. veteran missionary, the apostle of Wisconsin and founder of all the principal mission-posts within its borders, started from what is now De Pere with two men to visit the Kaskaskia Mission, which Father Marquette had set up on the Illinois River as the final achievement of his all too brief career. Detained by intensely cold weather among the Potawatomi of Green Bay until February, 1677, Father Allouez then resumed his journey and about the middle of April reached the mouth of the Chicago River. Here, or some distance up the stream, he met a band of eighty Indians by whom he was welcomed with great display of cordiality.

“The Captain came about 30 steps to meet me, carrying in one hand a fire-brand and in the other a calumet adorned with feathers. Approaching me, he placed it in my mouth and lighted the tobacco, which obliged me to make pretense of smoking it. Then he made me come into his cabin, and having given me the place of honor, he spoke as follows:

‘My Father, have pity on me; suffer me to return with thee, to bear thee company and take thee into my village. The meeting that I have had with thee to-day will prove fatal to me if I do not use it to my advantage. Thou bearest to us the gospel and the prayer. If I lose the opportunity of listening to thee, I shall be punished by the loss of my nephews whom thou seest in so great numbers: without doubt they will be defeated by our enemies. Let us embark then, in company, that I may profit by thy coming into my land.’ That said, he set out at the same time as ourselves and shortly after, we arrived at his abode.’ ”

No further details of Father Allouez’s visit in 1677 to the site of Chicago are known outside of the few just cited, which he himself put on record. After him, other members of his Order, including Sebastian Rasles, James Gravier, Julian Binneteau and Gabriel Marest gave their services to the maintenance of the Kaskaskia Mission. They most probably made use of the Chicago portage on their way to the Mission from their headquarters in Canada. One of their number, Father Gravier, set out from Chicago in 1700 on a journey down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. ‘‘I received on my return from Michilimackinak,’’ he wrote to a

° Jesuit Lelations, 60: 158. ‘‘In April, 1677, the party entered at last the river. which leads to the Illinois, undoubtedly the stream now flowing through Chicago.’’ MASON, op. cit., p. 44.

Zenobe

1681; Cavelier de la Salle, Anastasius Douay, 1688 le THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CHICAGO friend, ‘‘the letter that you did me the honor of writing to me by way of the Mississipy, addressed to Father Aveneau, who sent it to me at Chicagoua — whence I started in 1700, on the 8th of September, to come here.’’® In December, 1681, four years and more later than his arrival at the Chicago River, Allouez was followed there by the exploring party of La Salle and Tonty. In the party was the Recollect Zenobe Membré, who was later to lose his life at the hands of hostile Indians in the wilds of Texas. Seven years more were to pass when in 1688 the sad survivors of La Salle’s last exploring party passed through Chicago on their way to Canada. Joutel, whose Journal is a classic in the literature of American exploration, led the group, which included two priests, M. Cavelier de La Salle, a brother of the explorer, and the Recollect, Father Anastasius Douay. Bad weather kept the travellers at the Chicago River from March 29 to April 5, when they began to paddle their canoes over the waters of Lake Michigan. They had found but little game at their stopping-place, but the maple trees furnished an abundance of syrup in which they boiled their Indian corn, ‘‘which made it delicious, sweet and of a very agreeable relish.’”

° Jesuit Relations, 65: 100.

* Memoir of the Sieur De Tonty in FRENCH’S Historical Collections of Lowisiana, 59. JOUTEL’S Jowrnal in FRENCH’s Hist. Coll. Lowisiana, 190. Joutel has this reference to Chicago: ‘‘We went on until Thursday the 25th when we arrived at a place called Chicagou, which, according to what we were told, has been so called on account of the quantity of garlic growing in this district in the woods. There is a small river there, formed from the drainage from a great plain or prairie at that place which flows straight into the lake, called, as I have said elsewhere, the Lake of the Illinois of Michigan,’’ Jowrnal in QuairE, The De-

Glaneing back at our narrative, we see that five Catholic priests at least, Fathers Marquette, Allouez, Membré, Cavelier de la Salle, and Douay, find mention in contemporary records as having visited the site of Chicago before the establishment there of the Jesuit Mission of the Guardian Angel by Father Pinet towards the close of the seventeenth century.

We now come to a highly interesting episode that stands out phantom-like through the dim twilight of early Chicago history. The substance of the fact is beyond dispute, but details are tantalizingly few. It is a truth scarcely recorded in the history books, so casual is the mention of it surviving in documentary sources, that on the site of Chicago or in its immediate vicinity there existed during the closing years of the seventeenth eentury a Catholic Mission conducted on behalf of the Miami Indians of the neighborhood. It was established under the name of the ‘‘Guardian Angel’’ in 1696 by the Jesuit Father Francois Pinet and maintained by him until 1700, when it closed its doors. We get but a faint picture of this primitive establishment from the few meagre particulars that survive. As to its precise

. velopment of Chicago, p. 22. According to Joutel (Journal, p- 31), the Jesuits had built a fort at Chicago, a statement not in accordance with the facts. See in the Transactions of the Illinois Historical Society, a study by MiLo MILTON QUAIFE, “<Was there a French fort at Chicago?’’ which query he answers in the negative. However, there is evidence, though perhaps not altogether decisive, that in 1682 or 1683 La Salle caused to be built at Chicago a small post or fort, which was afterwards strengthened by Tonty and La Forest. See Anvorp, The Illinois Country, Centennial History of Illinois, 1: 89, 101. ‘‘After Marquette’s hut this was the first building on the site of Chicago.’’

Francois Pinet

and the Mission of the Guardian Angel, 1696-1700

MM.

Montigny, Davion, St. Cosme, 1698 location, investigators are not agreed, though all fix it within the city limits of Chicago or a few miles beyond. It has been placed on the banks of Lake Calumet® as also on the margin of the marshy body of water known as the ‘‘Skokie,’’ at a distance of two miles north of the city-limits of Evanston.® A recent student of the problem, rejecting the locations named, reaches the conclusion that the Miami Mission of the Guardian Angel stood ‘‘on the Chicago River somewhere between the forks and the mouth,’’ in what is now the very heart of the metropolis.?° At all events, then, the Mission was established either on the site of the modern Chicago or in close proximity to it, and this circumstance, coupled with the fact that it bore the city’s name, Mission de L’Ange Guardien de Chicagou, lends it surpassing interest in the story of early Catholicism in Chicago. Situated as it was on the route usually taken by missionaries from Canada as they made their way south to the mission-posts on the Illinois River, the Mission

* WiLttiamM HEeNry LEE, The Calumet Portage, in Transactions of the Illinois Historical Society, 1912.

* Father Pierre Francois Pinet, 8. J., and his Mission of the Guardian Angel of Chicago (L’Ange Guardien) 1696-1699. A paper read before a joint meeting of the Chicago Historical Society and the Evanston Historical Society in the Chicago Historical Society Building, Nov. 27, 1906, by Frank R. Grover. Quaife, characterizing Grover’s study as uncritical, declines to accept the latter’s contention in favor of the ‘‘Skokie’’ or North Shore site of Father Pinet’s Mission.

* QUAIFE, op. cit., p. 42. ‘‘From every point of view the study of St. Cosme’s letter leads to the conclusion that the Mission of the Guardian Angel was on the Chicago River at some point between the forks and the mouth.’’?’ Gurdon §. Hubbard in his Autobiography places Father Pinet’s Mission on the North branch of the Chicago River though on what evidence does not appear.