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i.

Cincinnati

THE PADDLE-WHEEL RIVER PACKET warped its way to the waterfront of Cincinnati on 10 September 1839, to its berth amidst other moored riverboats, with their tall twin smoke pipes and wide decks, bearing such names as Car of Commerce, Ohio Belle, Belle Creole, Cincinnatus, Brooklyn, and New Orleans. The missioners saw the straggle of stores, shacks, and mansions rising away on the slope in the midst of open fields. Not yet a half century old, it was, with almost fifty thousand people, the greatest city of Ohio. It all looked raw. They left the ship and proceeded to the “little seminary” where Bishop Purcell was already training local youths for the priesthood. There the newcomers were to lodge, and, they hoped, there they would have a chance to advance their study of the language of America. How could they be at home until they could communicate, or preach, or feel like Americans?

But the few faculty members of the seminary were so busy with their duties of teaching resident seminarians and also carrying on parish work that they had no time to give English lessons, and little for conversation. To their dismay, the young Frenchmen met with the community only for a short while after supper every evening.

There were strangenesses to become used to. In America, it appeared, priests were addressed as Mister. When priests went into the city, they changed from cassock to the dress of laymen—a long frock coat, a high-buttoned waistcoat, and (the Frenchmen laid aside the black tricorne as worn at home by Monsieur l’Abbé) a tall hat of brushed silk nap or a shapeless felt headgear with a wide drooping brim. If they looked to Purcell for continued companionship like that of shipboard they found him endistanced by work—people even invaded his mealtimes to talk business, and only now and then was he able to join in the after-supper gatherings. Lamy and his friends were left “without anything special to do” The inaction of their days was far different from the visions they had made of America and the sanctifying sacrifices that would be demanded of them. Now it was Machebeuf’s turn to fall ill—he was ill for fifteen days and he wondered if he would ever become accustomed to America.

But at last, after three weeks, the bishop had orders for them hardly less amazing than the disappointments of Cincinnati. He saw how weary they were of inaction, and how their first eagerness might be wasted. Despite their inexperience, their lack of the language, and the state of the country, he suddenly assigned all the new Frenchmen to certain mission parishes in Ohio which had no regular pastors. It would be their duty to bring scattered settlers together to form parish groups, and to build churches. Others at the seminary wondered at the assignments—young men in their twenties given pastoral charges?

But Lamy and his fellow countrymen assumed the inland wilderness of the Middle West with restored spirits. Each was given a central location to develop—a little cluster which might one day be a town—from which other settlements could be served. Lamy was given Danville, in the wooded middle of the state; Machebeuf, Tiffin, which lay to the north, on the flat lands not far from Lake Erie. One thing which “astonished” them was that they had been sent so quickly to separate assignments. Each was to be on his own.