The Heritage Museum and Cultural Heart in St. Joseph will maintain a presentation on the historical past of the Catholic Church in Berrien County subsequent month.
The museum’s Dennis Szymanski tells us that historical past goes again so far as the 1600s, when the primary French settlers moved into the realm bringing clergymen with them.
“La Salle came with four Jesuit priests in and met the Pottawatomie Indians,” Szymanski mentioned. “They established a church mission at the site of what now is the Whitcomb. They called it Fort Miami, and the river wasn’t named for St. Joe until many years later. At the time, it was the Miami River because of the Miami Indians there.”
Szymanski says the French pursued the fur commerce and sought a path to India through the Mississippi River once they first got here into the realm. In addition they needed to transform the Pottawatomi folks to Catholicism.
The primary Catholic Church within the space was St. Joseph Catholic Church, based within the 1800s at its present website, though initially with a unique constructing.
Szymanski says the Heritage Museum has been engaged on an exhibit on native church buildings, and as a part of that, he needed to provide a lecture on this one facet of the realm’s improvement.
The presentation will probably be August 1 on the Heritage Museum beginning at 7 p.m. It is going to be free, and there’s a Zoom possibility accessible. Test the web site of the Heritage Museum for extra data.
“Well bless their hearts.”
