Crawford County WI Archives Church Records.....St. Gabriel's Parish
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com October 27, 2007, 9:18 pm

ST. GABRIEL'S PARISH—DIOCESE OF WISCONSIN
Bishop Henni

   In 1844, when Bishop Henni arrived at Milwaukee, his diocese embraced the
whole of Wisconsin Territory, which for many years had formed the northwestern
part of the diocese of Detroit. The population of Wisconsin then numbered 70,000
souls, of whom 20,000 were Catholics. For the greater part they inhabited the
southern districts, especially the counties along the lake shore, more so than
in the West, along the Mississippi.

   The first tour of his diocese, undertaken shortly after: the Pentecost of
1844, brought Bishop Henni ultimately to Crawford County and Prairie du Chien.
That the little settlement, lying at the western extremity of his diocese,
"where the Mississippi absorbs the Wisconsin," impressed the bishop, we have
evidence from one of his letters. He was not so favorably impressed, however, by
the condition in which he found the parish of St. Gabriel's. What these findings
were we glean from a letter of Bishop Henni, written the following year:

  "Years ago they began erecting a church 100 feet long, built entirely of
stone. But I found it not only still incomplete, but also burdened with a debt
of $3,000. How and why such a building could be undertaken is beyond my
comprehension, for the parish will never be able to pay this debt from its own
resources. Yet it must be admitted that the church, which is placed under the
patronage of the holy archangel Gabriel, is and always will remain an imposing,
durable structure. Wherefore the money must not at all be considered as
squandered; the mistake in it all was to begin building at such an inopportune
time."

   During his stay of several days, the Bishop administered Confirmation to a
goodly number of adults, among them eleven converts. It was not the first time a
bishop had conferred the sacrament at St. Gabriel's new church, as Bishop Loras
of Dubuque had previously confirmed large classes in 1841 and 1842.

   Before the departure of the 'Patriarch of the Northwest,' as Bishop Henni has
been appropriately called, he paid a visit to a Catholic chief of the
Winnebagoes, named Decarrah. The Bishop was struck by the imposing figure and
bearing of the aged Winnebago, and recounts admiringly how the devout old man
would frequently make visits to St. Gabriel's, accompanied by his family and
some Catholics of his tribe, always raising his tent or wigwam near the church.

   During the quarter-century that Prairie du Chien remained attached to the
diocese of Milwaukee, the indebtedness of St. Gabriel's parish proved a worry to
the good bishop and a constant drain on the resources of the diocese. Indeed, in
his reports to the Propagation of the Faith at Rome he mentions it again and
again. As early as 1846 the debt is referred to as "an old one," and at that
date is set down as amounting to $2800—a staggering sum, it would seem, for that
day and age when money was less plentiful and more valuable than it was to
become later on. In 1851, the Bishop reported that he had paid $508 on the debt
for the previous year, and would be required to pay an equivalent sum for that
and the following year, together with $800 for 1853. He concludes his report
with the charge "that St. Gabriel's stone church was commenced on too large a
scale by Bishop Loras in the expectation that "the village of Prairie du Chien
would increase; but it remained 'in statu quo'."


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

Centennial History of St. Gabriel's Parish
PRAIRIE DU CHIEN WISCONSIN
1836       1936
DR. P. L. SCANLAN, M. D.


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