USA > Alabama > A Catholic history of Alabama and the Floridas Volume 1 > Part 21
USA > Florida > A Catholic history of Alabama and the Floridas Volume 1 > Part 21
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When Bishop Rosati received the Bulls of Pope Leo XII. November 4, 1825, appointing him Bishop of New Orleans, he besought His Holiness to allow him to decline that dignity, but without avail. No priest in these regions willingly accepted the mitre. It had proved a crown of thorns to most of its wearers.
General Wilkinson captured Mobile with U. S. Regulars, April 15, 1813, raised the Stars and Stripes over the Fort, and transferred the district to the American Republic. In 1819, Alabama was a State.
In 1857, Bishop Verot became Vicar Apostolic of Florida, Father Aubril and Sheridan, of the Mercy Order, were then at St. Augustine. Looking back, we find a famous native of Florida, Father Francis de Florencia, born 1620, who took the habit of the Society of Jesus at the age of twenty-three, and was sent to Madrid, and then to Rome. He was afterwards ap- pointed procurator at Seville of all the provinces of his Order in the Indies. He returned to Mexico, where he died at the age of seventy-five.
In autumn, 1858, Bishop Verot announced the jubilee and promised to use every exertion to obtain priests to visit all the stations regularly. He next visited Europe and returned towards the close of 1859, with six priests and four Christian Brothers. Mean- while Bishop Lavialle declined the See of Savannah, and His Holiness transferred Bishop Verot to that city leaving him still Vicar Apostolic of Florida. One of his first acts was the dedication of St. Patrick's Church in Augusta, erected to a great extent by the means of Rev. Gregory Duggan, a native of Wexferd, a most zealous, laborious priest. Pastor of Augusta for seventeen years, his whole life was devoted to works of piety and charity, especially to the Orphans
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domesticated in his own house. So great was his activity as a missioner that his people described him by the familiar Georgia term, the wheel horse. After fifty years of priesthood he died the death of a Saint, Dec. 5, 1870.
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CHAPTER LI.
SOME tribes retained much of the Christianity preached to their ancestors; they were still clamoring for the black-robes. The Indians were said to be implacable in war. The only man in these regions who ever manipulated them so as to secure their allegiance and subjugation was Bienville. The hostile Creeks were often called Red Sticks, because their war clubs were painted red. Waldo calls the Creeks the most warlike tribe of Barbarians in the universe. The red feather was also a war emblem.
At Spring Hill College Two Military Companies were formed under the command of Major Sands and Mr. Parker, as if the students were preparing for military duty. Jan. 9, 1861, Alabama seceded from the Union. The Confederate Government was or- ganized, and Jefferson Davis elected President. Feb. 8, April 18, great excitement was created by the news of the secession of Virginian. Many of the Jesuits accompanied the troops to various quarters, as chap- lains. The Louisiana boys had to return home by Jackson, Miss. and Baton Rouge, La., as the entrance to Mobile Bay was blockaded by the Federals. This cut off all communication between the College, New Orleans and Europe. Mass wine was pressed from the scuppernong grape, and some Brothers went to Mon Louis Island, to evaporate salt from sea-water.
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All the members of the College were enlisted in the 89th Regiment of Alabama, but furloughed on plea of teaching. Several boys were withdrawn lest Mobile might be attacked. Great excitement prevailed among the rest. The fortifications of Mobile were begun in May, 1862. Two thousand refugees came from New Orleans to Mobile. Over thirty asked hospitality at the College and were most kindly received. Many youths were sent by their parents to the college to prevent their being drafted into the army. Four men of war were stationed in the Bay. In September, Father Usannez started for Anderson, Georgia, where thirty thousand Federals were kept prisoners. He suffered many hardships and privations.
The Federals took posession of Mobile, April 12. A thousand soldiers occupied the Hill to protect the college. April 9, 1865, General Lee surrendered, and the war was over. In 1867, there was a terrible epidemic of yellow fever in New Orleans and Mobile.
In 1869, a fire broke out in the College, and in a few hours College and Church were a heap of ruins. The students, about ninety, were received at the Col- lege of Grand Coteau, where studies were resumed. On the Feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph, April 25, the corner-stone of a new College was blessed by Right Rev. John Quinlan, second Bishop of Mobile, assisted by Rev. C. T. O'Callaghan and many of the clergy. On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1869, the new college opened with fifty-three students. In 1883, Bishop Quinlan died at New Orleans. He may be considered the second founder of the college. It was owing in great part to his kind encouragement and substantial aid, that the college was rebuilt after the disastrous fire.
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CHAPTER LII.
BISHOP ENGLAND estimated Catholics in West Florida at two thousand souls. In St. Augustine, where Catholics had once numbered tens of thousands, the vampire policy, of England decimated them again and again until they were little over four hundred. There were one hundred at St. John's River, and about two hundred, mostly fishermen and Minorcans, on Amelia Island. On the death of Rev. Michael Crosbie, Bishop England sent Rev. Francis Boland, another excellent priest, to St. Augustine where he remained till 1825. Bishop Dubourg and the Bishop of Santiago de Cuba had asked Bishop England to take charge of St. Augustine.
Bishop Portier's holy ambition was gratified long before his lamented death. Mobile had a Superior College for boys and a Superior Seminary for girls. The city was within easy reach of many populous centres within his diocese and outside it. The commu- nication between New Orleans and Mobile, two cities of Bienville, was by stage coach between Mobile and Pascagoula, and thence by the Pouchartrain Railroad to New Orleans, the home of many of the pupils of the College and the Convent.
The Perdido River was the dividing line between Florida and Alabama. St. Augustine, the county seat of St. John's Co., and the first capital of Florida,
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has preserved many of its ancient landmarks, and is one of the few cities in America visited for its history and antiquities rather than business or commerce. It extends nearly a mile from the Franciscan barracks, Santa Elena, to the Castle of San Marco. Fort Marion,1 the oldest Fort in the United States. A most picturesque ruin is the ancient city gateway, which has thirty feet of the original city wall on each side. Along Orange Street is an ancient moat.
The chief Street, St. George's, is crossed by Treasury Street, which in crossing it narrows to only seven feet. Under Spanish rule it had a population of over three thousand with a garrison of two thousand five hun- dred. The chief industries are the manufacture of cigars with some curing of fish for the northern mar- kets, and the raising of early fruits and vegetables. Anastasia Island lies across the Matanzas River. Fort Marion is on the River; the Sea may be seen in the distance. There are many cottages on the Island, all rented. St. Augustine is a summer, as well as a winter resort. The transient population is often quite large, many coming from the West Indies, called in early days " the American Isles."
The old Spanish Gate which used to be an illustra- tion in every early history is still an object of interest. Most of the modern houses lie outside the gate, where the streets are much broader. The Plaza de Armas is in the business district. Opposite is the Post Office, built on the site of the Governor's palace, of ancient
1 Fort Marion, El Castillo de San Marco, the oldest fort in the United States. A tablet over the entrance gives the years of its completion as 1756. It has the Spanish coat of arms and a Spanish inscription. The sea-wall of coquina with granite top, is a splendid promenade extending from the fort to the convent.
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days. The famous Fort Marion and the Sea wall, now a graceful promenade, were one hundred years in building. Coquina, a natural concrete of shell and lime, found in large quantities on Anastasia Island, is much used in building and paving.
Among other curiosities at St. Augustine is a coarse, unlovely shed called " The Old Slave Market," a blot on a beautiful scene. A native told the writer it had never been used as such. But it seems one of the permanent monuments of the history and develop- ment of this region.
The immense hostelry, Ponce de Leon, is perhaps the largest in America. It is said to have cost over 2,000,000 dollars and is exceedingly beautiful, outside and within.
When the British came in, there were over nine thou- sand houses in St. Augustine. The old bell dated 1682, still rings out the morning, noon, and night Angelus. The gold for which the nations were always searching has been found in our day, in the fertility of the soil and the salubrity of the climate. Fruits and vege- tables of all kinds abound. Sugar-cane and pine-apples begin near St. Augustine and continue to where the land stretches into the warm waters that lave Cape Sable.
Vast regions continued to open up to the zeal of the Church, and the church was mostly in advance of the civil explorers. But though the missioners struggled on, under appalling difficulties there was sometimes little return for the arduous labors of the past, and present conditions were not always flourish- ing or promising.
Self sacrificing priests of different orders never wholly ceased their labors on the Gulf Coast. In the
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long winter evenings they would talk over with their simple hosts the legends of the history of their orders, embroidered with silken threads of loving memories- memories sometimes mistaken for hopes.
The Catholic missioners were men of unblemished lives, imbued with the learning of the cloisters whence they came. With sandalled feet, and tattered gar- ments, renouncing pomp and splendor, they moved among the aborigines as Fathers and friends, who desired only to draw them to God. And be their faults what they may, every cavalier felt himself a soldier of the cross. Treaties were held and boun- daries settled. Creeks and Cherokees warred and made peace. But the holy men who came among them at the risk of their lives thought nothing was done until the children of the forest were gathered into the One Fold, of which Christ is the Shepherd, and con- fessed One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all." Losses in the Old World were repaired by conquests in the New.
The English Colony of North Carolina was a deadly foe at the very gates of Florida. St. Augustine was menaced by the sea which threatened to wash away its fortifications, and by Spain, which proposed to abandon it, and transfer its inhabitants to Pensa- cola.
A site was selected for a settlement at Pensacola, and a frame church was immediately erected. On St. Mark's day, April 25, 1693, the first mass was said, the Spaniard marching in procession, chanting the Litany of Loretto, to the spot selected, where a cross was set up. This was the beginning of Pensacola. A band of twenty Franciscan Missionaries under Father Lopez was sent to found new Christian Communities
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in tribes which showed a desire to embrace the Catholic Faith. Success encouraged them at first, but in October, 1696, the heathen Indians of Taroro and other towns rose up against the Spaniards, killed one of the priests, a soldier, and five Indian Converts, burned the church, and fled to the woods. The sur- vivors being left without shelter or flock, withdrew to St. Augustine. Five Religious, however, with an ex- perienced Superior versed in the language, were sent to reclaim the Indians, and, it is said, succeeded.
Sept. 11, 1697, Father Lopez, with five other Friars carrying supplies of all kinds, sailed from Havana. After touching at Key West, they heard the old cacique was very ill and begged for baptism, which was administered. A house and chapel were erected for the Franciscans, but no attention was paid to their instructions, while a hut used for idolatrous purposes was thronged, and the Indians even called on them to give them food and clothing for their Gods. The priests were seized, robbed of their goods, and left at Matercombe. The vessel which had brought them over, rescued them.
In 1699, the Barkentine, " Reformation," was wrecked on the Coast of Florida, and Captain Jonathan wrote a journal of their adventures till they were rescued by a Spanish party, conveyed to St. Augustine, and sent northward along the coast from one mission to another. The shipwrecked men received the kindest treatement at St. Augustine, and, in September, set out with an escort.
At Santa Cruz, three leagues from St. Augustine, they found a large chapel with three bells, and a Franciscan in charge. The Indians were as constant to their devotions at all times and seasons as the
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Spaniards. The party was lodged in a large ware- house, used as a general place of meeting. San Juan, on an island, thirteen leagues farther on, had its chapel and priests. At St. Mary's they found a Franciscan with his church, and a school of Indian boys. Near it was another mission, St. Philip, and, finally, St. Catherine's Island-a place called Santa Catalina, where there hath been a great settlement of Indians, for the land hath been cleared for planting for some miles distant." In fact, it was one of the old mission stations, where Church and Convent had been de- stroyed by the Carolina Indians. Yet Dickinson's narrative shows that these mission stations not only civilized the Indians, and reformed their savage char- acter, but were a life saving organization along the coast, where the ship wrecked found Christians wel- come and aid. Yet the neighboring English colonies destroyed them.
The war of the Spanish succession gave South Carolina a pretext for hostility against its Catholic neighbor. Florida, Governor Moore was eager for the plunder of a Spanish town and for Indian Con- verts to enslave. The Apalache Indians had been forced to labor on the fortifications and sea wall. These saved Florida, for though the English from North Carolina, in 1702, took and fired the city, the fort resisted their efforts.
Governor Moore 1 instigated the Apalachicolas to
1 Some of the Indians Moore employed in cultivating his own fields ; others he sold for his pecuniary profit. Indian towns were destroyed, priests killed, and hundreds of converts hurried off as slaves to the West Indies. The war which the savage tyrant, Moore, made on the Christians of Florida, was really a religious war of the English on the Catholics. It extended also to Cuba, "the most beautiful land that human eyes ever beheld " said Columbus.
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invade the Apalache country, where, under the guise of friendship, they burned the church, but the Catholic Indians saved vestments and pictures. A Spanish force pursuing the enemy was defeated and the com- mander slain. Moore fitted out an expedition, and coming in his vessels by sea spread devastation along the coast. The Christian Indians had in consequence of previous hostilities, retired to St. Mark's Island, where they formed three towns. These were burned, with their churches and Convents. Three Franciscans fell into the hands of the enemy. The Indian Con- verts fled to St. Augustine. Moore had effected a union with Colonel Daniel to capture the fort.
But the brave Governor, Zuñiga, having received a small re-inforcement, resisted all the efforts of the English. Some Spanish ships appeared in the harbor, and Moore raised the siege which had lasted over fifty days. Finding escape impossible by sea, he set fire to his ship, he retreated overland.
Before withdrawing, he committed the barbarity of burning the town. The Parish Church, the Church and Convent of the Franciscans perished, and plate to the value of a thousand dollars was carried off by Moore. "To show what friends some of them were -to learning and books," writes Rev. Edward Mars- den,1 a Protestant Clergyman, "when they were at St. Augustine they burned a library of books worth six hundred pounds, including a collection of the Greek and Latin Fathers. The Holy Bible itself did not escape, because it was in Latin. This outrage was done as soon as they arrived, by Colonel Daniel, a furious freebooter.
This was the fine Library in the Franciscan Convent
1 Documentary History of the P. E. Church.
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at St. Augustine. The Guardian of the Convent, Father Martin de Aleano went to Spain to lay these outrages before the king, who regarded the wanton destruction of a defenceless town as a mark English provincial hatred. The Spanish monarch ordered the rebuilding of the Church and Convent, for which funds were sent from Spain.
Governor Moore sought to carry off the Indian Con- verts of the Spanish priests to sell them as slaves, in which he was, unfortunately, successful. Ruiz, Com- mander of the Spanish Garrison, twice repulsed the assailants, but his ammunition failing, most of his force were killed or taken prisoners. Many prisoners were tied to stakes, tortured, and burned to death. Father Miranda appealed to Moore to prevent such horrible cruelties, but to no purpose.
Father Parga who had given absolution to the In- dians before the skirmish, was burned at the stake, beheaded, and his leg hacked off. Mexia, the brave soldier, was held for ransom, Father Miranda and others also, but the Spanish officers could not pay, and all were burned at the stake. They bore their agonies with heroic fortitude, praising and blessing God that they had the honor to die for the Holy Name of Jesus.
Moore finally retired, carrying a thousand Indians to sell as slaves. Several missionaries went through the ruined towns. Scenes of indescribable horror met their gaze everywhere. Parallel scenes might be quoted of the priests massacred in the Huron Country. But the butcheries perpetrated in Florida were enacted before the eyes, and by the orders of a Christian Governor of a Christian State.
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CHAPTER LIII.
THE famous John Wesley desired to convert the Indians, but had small success in this direction, 1736. Charles Wesley went out as Secretary to Governor Oglethorpe. The more eloquent Whitfield devoted himself to establishing an Orphan House, in a place where children without means were few. He after- wards tried to turn this institution into a college. Wesley's reception in Savannah was not favorable, 1736. On his return to England he wrote: "I who went to America to convert others, had never been my- self converted." Whitfield's design of establishing an Orphanage on lands obtained from trustees for that purpose, succeeded partially, for a while, but was abandoned after his death. George Whitfield is de- scribed as the founder of Calvinistic Methodists. None of these achieved any success in the work of Christianizing the Indian. They 1 failed in the South as a greater man failed in the North: George Berk- ley, afterwards Protestant Bishop of Cloyne in Ire- land, who spent his time mostly in Rhode Island. None of them entered the Floridian territory.
Frobisher made three voyages to the New World,
1 Of John and Charles Wesley, celebrated Methodists, Mr. Pickett says : History of Alabama, Vol. I. p. 311, " Among the colonists, with whom they resided many years, they became not only unpopular, but very obnoxious."
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1576-1579, but his few discoveries were unimportant. The fictitious gold with which he loaded his vessels on two return voyages, proved to be worthless stones. The English instead of tilling the land, hunted for gold, and there was no English town on the American Continent at the close of the sixteenth century and but two of Spanish origin, St. Augustine and Santa Fe, within the present boundaries of the United States.
Sir Francis Drake, the first Englishman who cir- cumnavigated the globe, or, as he said, " ploughed a furrow around the globe," was a daring pirate. He was also the first Englishman to see the Pacific, dis- covered by Balboa fifty years before. He pillaged the Spanish settlements in Chili and Peru and on the Spanish Main .1 Meanwhile the Church was flourish- ing in many parts colonized by Spaniards and French, and, as time went on, the Catholic clergy even pene- trated New England, although one of the blue laws ordained that " No priest shall abide in this dominion; he shall be banished, and suffer death on his return. Priests may be seized by any one, without a warrant."
Spain held Florida by right of conquest. The Eng- lish divided it into East and West. Georgia the last of the thirteen States was settled by the English, in 1733. The people of Georgia and the Carolinas were, as we have seen, cruel enemies of the Catholics of St. Augustine. The Indian missions were destroyed by the English and their dusky allies, and it was long before Catholic priests and Religious again wended their way leading processions to the shrines and pilgrimages of the little city.
1 The massacre of Father Azevedo and his seventy companions is given in Chapter 3rd of the second volume of F. Cretineau Joly-a scene of fiendish cruelty.
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History, tradition, and even fiction, are eloquent of the terrors of the English pirates who scoured the Spanish main and descended on every place where booty was to be got, or Christian Congregations scattered. They sacked the most opulent towns and seized enormous treasures.
In 1589, to protect his treasure galleons from those dreaded " wolves of the sea," Drake and Hawkins, " who held the power and glory of Spain so cheap," Philip II. ordered two strong fortresses to be built to defend the Harbor of Havana, which are standing to- day. When the war broke out, Drake became more daring than ever. He ran unexpectedly into Spanish ports plundered the vessels, set fire to the shipping, and sailed off again. This he facetiously called : " Singing the Spanish King's beard. " He was for- ever trying to rob Spanish Galleons, and murder Catholics, Indian and Spanish. Among the treasures this freebooter seized was the great golden crucifix studded with emeralds as large as pigeon's eggs. On Drake's arrival in England, he gave a banquet at Plymouth, on board his vessel, the Pelican, to no less a personage than the famous or infamous Queen Elizabeth.1 The food was served in silver dishes, the wine in golden goblets, all the fruit of plunder. The queen conferred on this ferocious pirate the honor of Knighthood. He had precious metals unlimited, on a land expedition he had seized a convoy of mules laden with gold and silver, and declared on his return to England that he had obtained his treasures by barter
1 The depravity of public sentiment was such that the buccaneers boasted of their crimes. Says Bancroft : " when the sovereign of Eng- land, Queen Elizabeth, shared in its hazards, its profits, and its crimes, she became at once a smuggler and a slave merchant."
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with the natives. Sir Francis Drake, on May 8, 1585, with a large fleet after plundering the Spanish Colonies in the West Indies sailed for the feeble settlements of Florida. The buccaneers plundered Fort St. John of fourteen pieces of brass cannon and two thousand pounds sterling. (Williams, Florida. )
This daring freebooter was not unlike the Queen who was, in some sense, in partnership with him, and always ready to share his ill-gotten goods. When the minister of the Pelican, in a moment of danger as the ship ran aground, bade the sailors think of their sins and their immortal souls, instead of urging them to busy themselves about the ship, the chaplain was summoned before Drake who was enthroned on a sea- chest. Drake judged him guilty of cowardice, and sentenced him to be put in irons. He further declared the poor chaplain excommunicated, cut off from the Church of God, and given over to the devil. While delivering these awful judgments Drake " sat aloft in awful state," and trumpets were sounded. He exe- cuted a deserter on board his pirate ship. He slept with sentries at his door. The Pelican which had seen such riotous times, and seized so many unoffending galleons was destined to become a Protestant relic, in which state it is preserved to-day in the University of Oxford, England. After being preserved for many years, it fell asunder, and parts of it were made into the chair preserved at Oxford. This cruel pirate at- tempted to "singe the Spanish King's head," once too often. He perished while on his way to attack the Spanish galleons at the West Indies. Others say he died of chagrin, 1596, for having failed in an attack on Panama.
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