Perry County, Indiana - Chapter 12: Founding of Leopold by Father Bessonies, 1916

To THAT ardent missionary spirit of the French which, two centuries earlier, had sent Jacques Marquette and Jean du Lhut into an untamed continent's boundless wastes of forest verdure - mountains silent in primeval sleep; river, lake and glimmering pool, wilderness oceans mingling with the sky - may be attributed one phase of Perry County's development, distinctively individual from all the rest.

Augustus Bessonies, who was born at Alzac, Departement du Lot, France, on the day of Napoleon's final eclipse at Waterloo, June 17, 1815, was the chosen instrument for this werk, and in him lived again the dauntless courage of his consecrated predecessors. As a lad he attended the preparatory school of Montfaucon, going thence to the Seminary of Isse, near Paris, for the classics and natural philosophy.

In 1836 Simon Guillaume Gabriel Brute, first Roman Catholic Bishop of Vincennes (with jurisdiction then covering all Indiana) paid a visit to Isse during a trip abroad, and although young Bessonies had already been received as a postulant for foreign mission by the Lazarist Order, upon the advice of his director, Father Pinault, he offered his services to the visiting prelate for his far-off American diocese.

Great was the joy of Bishop Brute. Impulsively embracing Bessonies, he exclaimed : "Je suis heu7'eux a penser d'un autel nouveau dans ma chere Indixina" ("I am happy to think of a new altar in my dear Indiana.") "But," he added, "I have no seminary at Vincennes. Remain, therefore at St. Sulpice, and in three years I will send for you."

So he did, in 1839, but it was one of the latest acts in his long episcopal career. When Bessonies reached Havre to embark for America, the same sailing vessel in which he had engaged passage had brought to France the sad tidings of the good bishop's death. By the time the sorrowing deacon reached Indiana, October 21, 1839, Bishop Brute had been committed to his last resting-place. In the crypt of a mortuary chapel beneath the high altar of St. Xavier's Cathedral his ashes repose to this day, and it is easy to feel that his spiritual presence was not far distant, to add its intangible benediction when Augustus Bessonies was elevated to the priesthood, February 22, 1840, by the Right Reverend Celestine Rene de la Haiiandiere, the new Bishop of Vincennes.

Work among the Indians of Cass County, near Logansport where the Pottawatomies and Miamis under Chief Godfrey long dwelt on their 'Richardville' reservation, was desired by Father Bessonies, but the decision of his bishop sent him instead to the forests of Perry County as the first recorded minister of the Roman Catholic faith therein. With that far-seeing ecclesiastical policy which in countless other instances has secured to the Church of Rome land grants of strategic value. Bishop de la Haiiandiere had entered, or soon entered, a tract near the geographical centre of Perry County, and it is no reflection upon his judgment that its destiny has not been all that he anticipated.

"I, the undersigned, in order to promote both the temporal and spiritual welfare of the French people coming from Europe, resolved to lay off a town of the name of Leopold, in which, with God's assistance, I intend to erect a temple to the glory of the Almighty for them to worship therein their Maker, according to the dictates of their conscience ; the most glorious privilege a human being can enjoy, and of which we boast in this country of Freedom, become for us an adopted Land of Promise.

"Leopold is situated in Perry County, State of Indiana, in Township Five South, Range Two West, Section One, and contains forty acres, more or less, to-wit : the East half of the Southwest quarter of the Southwest quarter ox section, township and range as above stated, containing twenty acres, more or less ; and the West half of the Southeast quarter of the Southwest quarter of section, township and range above mentioned, containing twenty acres, be the same more or less.

"There is in Leopold one hundred lots. The town is laid off with six North and South streets running the whole length of the town, every one of them numbering (60) feet in width; the first street commencing at the Northeast quarter is Belgium Street; the second, Celestine Street; the third, Lafayette Street; the Fourth, Washington Street ; the fifth, Caroline Street, the sixth, German Street.

"There is also six streets East and West, sixty feet in width. The first is named Rome Street ; the second, Ohio Street; the third, Indiana Street; the fourth, St. Louis Street ; the fifth, Troy Street ; the sixth, St. Augustine Street.

"Each lot contains ninety-nine feet square, and every one of them is a comer lot. Four lots in the centre of Leopold will be kept for a public square, to-wit: the forty-fifth, forty-sixth, fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth ; which lots I keep the right to dispose of and to donate to the county for any public advantage, with other property whenever Leopold will be a county seat.

"To the credit thereof, before any court of the United States, or any magistrate whomsoever, I give my hand and usual seal. Given at Leopold, Perry County, In-

"Be it remembered that on the eleventh day of November, eighteen hundred and forty-two, personally appeared before me, an acting Justice of the Peace for the county aforesaid, Augustus Bessonies, who acknov/ledged the foregoing deed to be his voluntary act and deed for the purpose therein mentioned. Given under my hand and seal the day and year aforesaid.

Father Bessonies' own words, therefore, tell us the story of Leopold's founding, with a simplicity of purpose whose equivalent is only to be found in that wonderful Compact signed by the Pilgrim Fathers

Difficult, indeed, must have been the beginning of Father Bessonies' pastoral labours in that almost unbroken forest which yet covered practically all of Southern Indiana, where clearings were few, established highways unknown, and the only travel possible by means of the blazed trees marking a course through the tall timber from one place to another. Furthermore, although a graduated seminarian, the brave young priest's acquaintance with the English tongue was still rudimentary, while the point toward his steps were turned was as yet unnamed, even in Perry

A few years earlier, however, the Rev. Maurice de St. Palais (of noble French lineage, and later third Bishop of Vincennes), had established a mission upon the banks of Patoka River in Dubois County, for the German families living near, so Father Bessonies at length found himself safely in charge of the Rev. Joseph Kundek, of Jasper, to whom he was recommended for instructions as to the final stages of his somewhat vague journey.

Father Kundek had had the advantage of ten years' forest experience and it is told that he had himself blazed an original trail from Jasper to the site which he chose in 1840 for a new town, naming it Ferdinand, for the Emperor then reigning in Austria-Hungary. He drew, therefore, with his own hand a map, indicating by unmistakable natural landmarks such as rocks, creeks and hills, the route which Father Bessonies followed to his destination.

Nor was this the only instance wherein the revered Jasper priest marked out a path for his younger clerical brother, there being a distinct parallel in the extensive work carried on by the two men, with a strenuous activity unsparing of personal strength. Ill health, developed through exposure, brought Father Kundek's earthly life to its end, December 4, 1857, and the magnitude of his labours lying altogether outside Perry County may not be herein dwelt upon.

Father Bessonies, however, was one of those "men - so strong that they come to four-score years," living until February 22, 1901, being at that time Vicar General to the Right Reverend Francis Silas Chatard in Indianapolis, and an honourary Monsignor of the Vatican household, a title conferred upon him January 22, 1884, by Pope Leo XIII.

Held in affectionate esteem by people of every religion, or of none, for his many virtues, and for that winning disposition of bonhomie, which can not be portrayed by an English equivalent, the fondest love of Monsignor Bessonies himself was always cherished toward the flock and field of his first twelve years' work, and Perry County was dear to his heart until the end; especially those parishes of Leopold, Cannelton, Derby, Oil Creek and Troy, where he was the first Roman Catholic who ever officiated.

He was, also, a veritable "circuit rider," with a weekly schedule which long read thus : Sunday, masses in Leopold and Derby; Monday, Leavenworth; Tuesday, Corydon ; Wednesday, Newton Stewart ; Thursday, Jasper; Friday, Taylorville; Saturday, Rockport; and a volume could be filled with incidents thrilling and pathetic of his career in the wilderness.

An acquaintance with William H. English, formed during the presidential campaign of 1844, became a warm personal friendship, and it was through the influence of English at Washington, whither he had gone to accept an important position in the Treasury Department, that President Polk established in 1847 a postoffice at Leopold, Father Bessonies receiving the appointment as postmaster.

A kinsman of the English family had already located in the tiny hamlet, Doctor William P. Drumb, its first resident physician, if resident be the correct term describing a rural practitioner whose range of patients was scarcely narrower than the circle of Father Bessonies' parishioners. Doctor Drumb and William H. English were first cousins on the maternal line, grandsons of Philip Eastin, "a Lieutenant in the Fourth Virginia Regiment in the War of the American Revolution," to quote the inscription on the tombstone marking the spot of his burial, 1817, in the Riker's Ridge (or Hillis) Cemetery, a romantic spot overlooking the Ohio River, in Jefferson County, some few miles northeast of Madison.

William P. Drumb and his wife, Sarah A. Stevens, were the parents of seven children, the eldest son, Elisha English Drumb, born May 20, 1841, in Leopold, and educated for three years at West Point, becoming a successful lawyer and conspicuous politician in Cannelton, the father being the first County Clerk who lived there after it became the county seat in 1859. Through deaths and removals the children became widely scattered, none of the third generation now residing in Perry County.

The Drumbs were almost the only family of purely American stock coming into Leopold Township after the very earliest entries of Cunningham, Frakes, Mayo and a few others, but the French and Belgian immigrants of the 'forties have left a numerous progeny on the lands then taken up. Among the many names, only few of whom can be here enumerated, are noted Andrew Peter, Who felled the first tree in the heavy timber and thick underbrush on the site where Leopold stands today ; Jerome and Gustave Goffinet ; Jean Baptiste Marcilliat; Jean and Victor Goffinet; Andre Joseph Marcilliat ; Gerard Joseph Collignon ; Jean Francois Allard; Frangois Genet; Catherine Naviaux; Jean Baptiste and Josephine Nicolay ; Dominic Demonet and Joseph James, both early merchants; Joseph Francois Claudel; Auguste Reynaud; John A. Courcier, a veteran of the Second War with England ; Frangois Devillez; James Hanonville and Jean Joseph Maire. All these were pioneer landholders.

Almost equally early came Peter and Angeline (Emery) Casper, with their twelve children, from Wurttemburg, the father having been a soldier under Napoleon. They were among the few German settlers of the locality. Somewhat later Peter and Margaret (Devillez) George, who were natives, respectively, of Hachy and Nobresart, Luxembourg, arrived with a family of ten children, so both these names are now extensively represented.

To his own patron saint, St. Augustine, was dedicated Father Bessonies' first church, a small log building at the southern edge of Leopold, eventually super-

St. Mary's on the hill overlooking Derby, was his next mission established, followed by St. Croix, on Oil Creek, near what is now Branchville, and St. Pius, in Troy, at about the same period relatively from now.

The growing village of Cannelton could not be disregarded by the zealous pastor, who found among its newcomers many who were the spiritual children of his own faith and craved its ministrations. Only one place of public worship had been built, the Unitarian meeting-house at the corner of Washington and Third Streets (later becoming St. Luke's Episcopal Church), and since by the extreme liberality of its donors the edifice was open to every shade of belief, it was within its walls, on Sunday, June 10, 1849, following a service held by Father Bessonies, that the first Roman Catholic organization in Cannelton was effected.

Most of the ten or twelve families composing the proposed congregation were Irish by nativity or descent, so the trustees then elected. Dr. J. B. Smith, John W. Lyons, Anthony Clark and Michael Connor, were chosen as "trustees of a church to be erected in Cannelton, to be called St. Patrick's." From the American Cannel Company came the gift of an excellent lot in Seventh Street, facing the head of Madison Street, sufficiently large to accommodate future parochial buildings, besides a small parish cemetery. Such a donation had been customary with the company toward all religious and educational projects, with further liberal contributions of stone and other building materials.

Work was not begun until the following summer, but by the end of August the small stone edifice was under roof, and on September 22, 1850, the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, mass was said for the first time in the church. Father Bessonies officiated, and con- tinued to serve the congregation for some three years, or until his removal from Perry County to Jeffersonville. The parish had grown to a size demanding a resident clergyman, so the Rev. Bede O'Connor, one of the Benedictines from St. Meinrad's Abbey, v^^as placed in charge.

On Low Sunday, April 15, 1855, he was succeeded by the Rev. Michael Marendt, the third pastor of St. Patrick's and its last as an independent parish, the new, affiliated body of St. Michael's being separated from the mother-church by mutual agreement, February 28, 1858.

Seventy-eight German-speaking families then erected St. Michael's Church, still standing at the corner of Washington and Eighth Streets, leaving St. Patrick's Church to the English-speaking members of the congregation ; the priest's house to belong to both, for the use of the clergy serving the two parishes. The Rev. Chrysostom Foffa, O. S. B., laid the cornerstone of St. Michael's Church, June 13, 1858, Peter Clemens, Nicholas Kasper, John H. Spieker and Jacob Wiss being trustees.

One year later, or June 19, 1859, the massive stone building, a handsome type of Perpendicular Gothic architecture, was solemnly blessed by the Rev. Bede O'Connor, though the graceful spire, rising to a height of 156 feet and a landmark to every traveller approaching Cannelton, was not finished for more than another twelvemonth. On September 30, 1860, however, the bell which still strikes the hours as a town-clock for all the citizens (three others, purchased ten years later, marking the quarters) was raised to the belfry after benediction and rang out for the first time its Angelus.