Memoirs, historical and edifying

Born and educated in Milan, Italy, Samuel Mazzuchelli (1806-1864) began his American ministry in 1828 at Mackinac Island, a center of the fur trade. Building churches, organizing schools, and preaching in both French and English, he traveled the Mississippi and the Great Lakes over long distances and in all seasons. After 1839, he continued much of his work in Iowa as a vicar-general to the bishop of the newly-created see of Dubuque. Mazzuchelli eventually founded both a men’s college and a teaching convent, the Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary, in Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, and extended the Church’s outreach within Native American communities. In 1849, Mazzuchelli relinquished many of his administrative responsibilities to become the priest of the parish at Benton, Wisconsin, where he also served as director of the novitiate and school opened by the Sisters of the Congregation of the Holy Rosary. Mazzuchelli’s Memoirs are divided into three sections: the first focuses upon missions among Native Americans and Canadians in Wisconsin and Michigan; the second deals with missions among Catholic and Protestant immigrants in the territories of Wisconsin and Iowa; and the third is a disquisition on the present and future state of Catholicism and Protestantism in the United States. Although spiritual matters are the principal concern, the memoirs also convey much about the Upper Midwest’s political life and early community institutions. – Summary from American Memory site.