Florimond J. Bonduel: Missionary to Wisconsin Territory [SIGNED], by Rosholt, Malcolm and John Britten Gehl
Inventory #: 01800
Price: $50.00

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Florimond J. Bonduel: Missionary to Wisconsin Territory [SIGNED], by Rosholt, Malcolm and John Britten Gehl. Rosholt House: Rosholt, Wisconsin, 1976. Edition: No edition stated, presumed first. Hardcover, 6.75 by 9.5 inches, 238 pages. Red paper-covered boards with gilt lettering on cover and spine. Illustrated with black and white photographs, maps and drawings. Includes footnotes and index. Signed by Malcolm Rosholt on title page.

Condition: Fine in a very good jacket. Jacket is sunfaded on spine, and to a lesser extent along the other margins; spine ends and upper margins have small chips and tears. Text is clean and tight.

Contents: Publisher's Note:

FLORIMOND JOSEPH BONDUEL, born in West Flanders, Belgium, came to the United States as a seminarian in 1831, and in 1834 became the first Catholic priest to be ordained in the new diocese of Detroit. His extensive travels took him through the future states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota where he founded numerous missions and churches. In 1837 he celebrated the first Catholic mass in Milwaukee at the house of Solomon Juneau.

But we also see the human side of the man when he attacks federal bureaucrats and Indian agents, and later when he becomes embroiled with a Mother Abbess over two small pieces of real estate in Green Bay, Wisconsin. His cool reception in Rome by Pius IX in 1856 is linked to this vexing problem and we see a former missionary, after more than twenty years of labor and privation, suffering both mental anguish and deep disappointment.

He was present at the signing of the Treaty of Lake Poygan in 1848 when the Menomini Indians ceded all their remaining lands in Wisconsin to the United States. He went to Washington in 1850 with the Indians to meet President Millard Fillmore, and two years later he successfully lobbied for a resolution in the state legislature which permitted the Menomini nation to remain in Wisconsin.

Unlike many emigrant clergymen to the United States, Florimond J. Bonduel seems to have discovered the meaning of the American Dream before he died and he came to love "this free America" as he once described it. He was a man who not only saw American history in the making but some of it he made himself.

Includes much material on the Menominee Indians, which were particularly dear to the missionary's heart.