Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/29

 NEW ORLEANS

NEW ORLEANS

when ho hmded in New Orleans he could hardly secure a room for himself and his brethren to occupy pending the rebuiltiinf; of the presbytery, much less one to con- vert into a chapel; for the population seemed indiffer- ent to all that savoured of religion. There were less than thirty persons at Mass on Sundays; yet, undis- mayed, the missionaries set to work and soon saw their zeal rcwardecl with a greater reverence for reli- gion and more faitliful attendance at church. In 1725 New (Jrlcaiis had liecome an important settlement, the CaiUK-hins liaving a flock of six hundred families. Mobile had declined to sixty families, the Apalache Indians (Catholics) numbered six-ty families, there were six at the Balize, two hundred at St. Charles or Les Allemandes, one hundred at Point Couple, six at Natchez, fifty at Natchitoches and the other missions which are not named in the " BuUarium Capucinorum " (Vol. VIII, p. 330).

The founder of the Jesuit Mission in New Orleans was Father Nicolas-Ignatius de Beaubois, who was appointed vicar-general for his district. He visited New Orleans and returned to France to obtain Fa- thers of the Society for his mission. Being also com- missioned by Bienville to obtain sisters of some order to assume charge of a hospital and school, he applied to the Ursulines of Rouen, who accepted the call. The royal patent authorizing the Ursulines to found a con- vent in Louisiana was issued 18 Sept., 1726. Mother Mary Tranchepain of St. Augustine, with seven pro- fessed nuns from Rouen, Le Havre, Vannes, Ploermel, Hennebon, and Elbceuf, a novice, Madeline Hau- chard, and two seculars, met at the infirmary at Henne- bon on 12 January, 1727, and, accompanied by Fa- thers Tartarin and Doutreleau, set sail for Louisiana. They reached New Orleans on 6 August to open the first convent for women within the present limits of the United States of America. As the convent was not ready for their reception, the governor gave up his own residence to them. The history of the Ursulines from their departure from Rouen through a period of thirty years in Louisiana, is told by Sister Madeline Hauchard in a diary still preserved in the Ursuline Convent of New Orleans, and which forms, with Fa- ther Charlevoix's history, the principal record of those early days. On 7 August, 1727, the Ursulines began in Louisiana the work which has since continued with- out interruption. They opened a hospital for the care of the sick and a school for poor children, also an acad- emy which is now the oldest educational institution for women in the United States. The convent in which the Ursulines then took up their abode still stands, the oldest conventual structure in the United States and the oldest building within the limits of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1824 the Ursulines removed to the lower portion of the city, and the old converit became first the episcopal residence and then the di- ocesan chancery.

Meanwhile Father Mathurin le Petit, S.J., estab- lished a mission among the Choctaws; Father Du Poisson, among the Arkansas; Father Doutreleau, on the Wabash; Fathers Tartarin and Le Boulenger, at Kaskaskia; Father Guymonneau among the Metcho- gameas; Father Souel, among the Yazoos; Father Baudouin, among the Chickasaws. The Natchez In- dians, provoked by the tyranny and rapacity of Cho- part, the French commandant, in 1729 nearly de- stroyed all these missions. Father Du Poisson and Father Souel were killed by the Indians. As an in- stance of the faith implanted in the Iroquois about this time there was received into the LTrsuline Order at New Orleans, Marv Turpin, daughter of a Canadian father and an Illinois mother. She died a professed nun in 1761, at the age of fifty-two with the distmc- tion of being the first American born nun in this coun- try. From the beginning of the colony at Biloxi the inimigration of women had been small. Bienville made constant appeals to the mother country to send

honest wives and mothers. From time to time shipa freighted with girls would arrive; they came over in charge of the Grey Nuns of Canada and a priest, and were sent by the king to be married to the colonists. The Bishop of Quebec was also charged with the duty of sending out young women who were known to be good and virtuous. As a proof of her respectability, each girl was furnished by the bishop with a curiously wrought casket; they are known in Louisiana history as "casket girls". Each band of girl.s, on arriving at New Orleans, was confided to the care of the Ursulines until they were married to colonists able to provide for their support. Many of the best families of the state are proud to trace their descent from "casket girls".

The city was growing and developing ; a better class of immigrant was pouring in, and Father Charle- voix, on his visit in 1728, wrote to the Duchesse de Lesdiguieres: "My hopes, I think, are well founded that this wild and desert place, which the reeds and trees still cover, will be one day, and that not far dis- tant, a city of opulence and the metropolis of a rich colony." His words were prophetic: New Orleans was fast developing, and early chronicles say that it suggested the splendours of Paris. There was a gov- ernor with a military staff, bringing to the city the manners and splendour of the Court of Versailles, and the manners and usages of the mother country stamped on Louisiana life characteristics in marked contrast to the life of any other American colony. The Jesuit Fathers of New Orleans had no parochial resi- dence, but directed the UrsuUnes, and had charge of their private chapel and a plantation where, in 1751, they introduced into Louisiana the culture of the sugar-cane, the orange, and the fig. The Capuchins established missions wherever they could. Bishop St- Vallier had been succeeded by Bishop de Mornay, who never went to Quebec, but resigned the see, after five years. His successor, Henri-Marie Du Breuil de Pontbriand, appointed Father de Beaubois, S.J., his vicar-general in Louisiana. The Capuchin Fathers refused to recognize Father de Beaubois' authority, claiming, under the agreement of the Company of the West with the coadjutor bishop, de Mornay, that the superior of the Capuchins was, in perpetuity, vicar- general of the province, and that the bishop could appoint no other. Succeeding bishops of Quebec declared, however, that they could not, as bishops, ad- mit that the assent of a coadjutor and vicar-general to an agreement with a trading company had forever de- prived every bishop of Quebec of the right to act as freely in Louisiana as in any other part of his diocese. This incident gave rise to some friction between the two orders which has been spoken of derisively by Louisiana historians, notably by Gayarre, as "The War of the Capuchins and the Jesuits ' ' . The archives of the diocese, as also the records of the Capuchins in Louisiana, show that it was simply a question of juris- diction, which gave rise to a discussion so petty as to be unworthy of notice. Historians exaggerate this be- yond all importance, while failing to chronicle the shameful spoliation of the Jesuits by the French Gov- ernment which suddenly settled the question forever.

In 1761 the Parliaments of several provinces of France had condemned the Jesuits, and measures were taken against them in the kingdom. They were ex- pelled from Paris, and the Superior Council of Louis- iana, following the example, on 9 June, 1763, just ten years before the order was suppressed by Clement XI V, passed an act suppressing the Jesuits throughout the province, declaring them dangerous to royal author- ity, to the rights of the bishops, and to the public safety. The Jesuits were charged with neglecting their mission, with having developed their plantation, and with having usurped the office of vicar-general. To the first charge the record of their labours was suffi- cient refutation;" to the-second, it was assuredly to the