Detroit

(Detroitensis)

Diocese established 8 March, 1838, comprises the counties of the lower peninsula of the State of Michigan, U.S.A. south of the Counties of Ottawa, Kent, Montcalm, Gratiot, and Saginaw, and east of the Counties of Saginaw and Bay; an area of 18,558 miles. Suffragan of Cincinnati.

To the martyr Father Isaac Jogues and his fellow Jesuit Father Charles Raynbaut, belongs the honour of planting the Cross in Michigan when, in 1642, they began their mission to the Chippeways of the Sault Ste. Marie. Father René Menard, also a Jesuit, followed them in 1660, and was martyred the next year by a band of prowling savages. His death did not deter others of his brethren in the Society of Jesus from hastening to this field of labour, and we find Father Claude Allouez, at Chegoimegon, 1 October, 1665, preaching to the Ottawas and Hurons, and with him these other missionaries: Fathers Claude Dablon, Louis André, Gabriel Druilletes, and the famous Jacques Marquette. The last, in 1671, began at Michilimackinaw, his mission of St. Ignatius, where the first chapel for white men in Michigan was established. France took formal possession of the West in 1671, but England entering the field to dispute for the mastery, political intrigue followed, to the disaster of the old missions among the Indians. Fort St. Joseph, established at Detroit in 1688, developed into the post established there in 1700 by La Mothe Cadillac, who brought with him a number of Canadian families. This mission was served by the Recollects and under the pastorate of the Rev. Nicholas Benedict Constantin de l'Halle, on 26 July, 1701, the church of St. Anne was dedicated. This is the mother-church of the Northwest, and the parish records are preserved in an unbroken series in the archives of the St. Anne's Church of the present, the building being the sixth of the name in the line of succession. The first entry in this registry is that of the baptism of a child of Cadillac, the founder of the colony. It is asserted that no other parish in the United States can present a similar record. This church was burned by discontented Indians in 1704, and again during an Indian outbreak in 1712. Father de l'Halle was killed by the Indians in 1706.

Other pastors during this period were the Recollect Fathers Bonaventure, Dominic de la Marche, Cherubin Denieau, Hyacinth Pelifresne, and Simplicius Bouquet (1752-82) and the Sulpitian Fathers Calvarin, Mercier, and Thaumur de la Somce. Detroit remained under English domination until 1796, when with the change of political control the spiritual jurisdiction passed to Bishop Carroll of Baltimore, and the Bishop of Quebec recalled his priests from the Michigan territory. Among those ministering at Detroit during the English occupation were Father Thomas Portier, who died in 1781, and Father John Francis Hubert, who was made Coadjutor Bishop of Quebec in June, 1785.

At the dawn of the nineteenth century Detroit, still a military post, had a population of about 2000, mainly French Catholics. St. Anne's parish then comprised the whole of the present State of Michigan and most of Wisconsin. In 1796 Bishop Carroll sent the Sulpitian Father Michael Levadoux to take charge at Detroit. In June of the same year Fathers Gabriel Richard and Dilhet were appointed to assist him, the latter taking up his residence at Raisin River. Father Levadoux was recalled to Baltimore in 1801. Father Richard succeeded him and became not only pastor of St. Anne's, but one of the leading figures in the development of the West. This remarkable priest was born at Saintes, France, 15 October, 1767. His father was a government employee, and his mother Geneviève Bossuet, a scion of the same family as the great Bishop of Meaux. He was ordained as a