JOHN HOGAN’S THIRD RECON TRIP TO THE OZARKS – January to March 1858

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Chapter 7 of Hogan’s memoir, On the Mission in Missouri 1857-1868, begins with the account of his third exploratory trip to the Ozarks. A different priest friend accompanied him this time, Father William Walsh of St. Peter’s parish in Jefferson City. As they rode the rails and by horseback, their conversation undoubtedly ranged wide. Two young priests, both born in 1829, from County Limerick searched the American frontier for land suitable for Irish immigrants fleeing their troubled homeland.  Those were not their only ties. Like Hogan, Walsh studied at the seminary at Carondelet and was ordained (1854) by Archbishop Kenrick in St. Louis.

This  wintery exploratory trip was longer than the first two. It appears that Hogan met Father Walsh in St. Louis in mid to late January. From there they headed south at the end of the month. Parish records from Chillicothe indicate the Hogan was absent from January 7 to March 13. 

(from On the Mission in Missouri, 1857-1868)

FATHER WALSH THE EMIGRANT'S FRIEND

REV. William Walsh, the devoted zealous pastor of St. Peter's church, Jefferson City, ever a loving faithful friend of the emigrant, took the greatest possible interest in every effort made to lead the good Catholic Irish people from the railroad shanties and the back streets and cellars of the cities, to locate them on lands. With this purpose in view, he offered to accompany me on my next journey into southern Missouri, so that having knowledge of the country and of the progress of the undertaking in which I was interested, he could aid me, if in his power, to do so.

We set out from St. Louis together in the last days of January, 1858. Traveling on the Iron Mountain Railroad to its southern terminus, then somewhere in Washington County, we thence proceeded on horseback, following somewhat, but diverging more southerly from, the route taken by Reverend Father Fox and myself a short time previous. At Van Buren we found a Canadian named Ronge, a Catholic, whose three children I baptized. Going eastward from there we crossed the Black River at its junction with Brushy Creek. Reverend Father Walsh when crossing the river, although keeping his feet raised as high as possible along the horse’s sides, still could not keep them entirely out of the water, which was deep and very cold, it being freezing weather at the time. The result was bad for the dear Reverend Father. The only change of clothing which we had was a pair of socks, which he put on instead of the wet ones. These did not save him. The cold wet boots and the wet frozen clothing brought on a chill, which was soon followed by coughing, and fever. Next, the flushed face and the short, difficult breathing with other symptoms of pneumonia, came on apace.

We diverged from our intended course and made by the shortest way for Greenville, the county seat of Wayne County, where we hoped to find some kind of hotel accommodation. For some days the dear Reverend Father lay in danger of death, in a poor uncomfortable tavern, and under the care of an unskilful physician. Soon, however, he began to recover and by degrees grew better so as to be past all danger, for which merciful favor I was most grateful to Almighty God. During his convalescence I made a journey to Jackson in Cape Girardeau County, to employ an agent near the Land Office there, to transact business for the settlers. Returned to Greenville, I was glad to find my dear reverend friend in much better health and courage than when I had left him. We again set out together and rode by easy stages towards the Iron Mountain and Potosi, thence homeward by rail to St. Louis; he going to Jefferson City and I to Chillicothe.

Father Walsh survived the illness and the “unskillful physician.” His cash contribution for the construction of the log church in Oregon County is noted in Hogan’s small account book. He continued as pastor at St. Peter's in Jefferson City until January 1863, when he became pastor of St. Bridget’s parish in St. Louis., where he served for 35 years. He died there in December 15, 1898.

The archives of the Archdiocese of St. Louis have a file of papers to and about Father Walsh.  In the file are several letters over the years from Bishop Hogan. An article about him in the 1920 Reunion book of St. Bridget’s Parish notes he was a defender of the poor and enemy of the dance halls. The article recounts a story of Father Walsh scattering revelers at a “Kerry Patch’ dance hall one Saturday night. They note: “not a hand was raised against the giant priest.”

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FAREWELL TO FATHER JAMES FOX, February 14, 1879

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Pasted in one of Hogan’s little scrapbooks, in the archives of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph, a yellowed newspaper clipping has Father Fox’s obituary.  He died February 14, 1879. Unfortunately, Hogan did not note the publication name.

Shared characteristics of the two Irish prelates come through in this accounting – fiscal responsibility and near-abhorrence of debt; dedication; plain spoken clarity of thought and word. Hogan and Fox were both frontier priests, ordained by Archbishop Kenrick, dedicated to the promise of America for the poor, the hopeful and the ambitious. They built churches, established schools and cleared debt

A brief biography was included in Father Fox’s obituary:

Obituary: The Rev. James Fox

Sketch of his life and labors – His last sickness – the funeral arrangements – services tomorrow.

The death of another well-known Catholic priest, in the person of Rev. James Fox of St. Patrick’s parish, which occurred yesterday, will occasion emotions of no ordinary depth among many persons who enjoyed no intimate acquaintance with the deceased, but had heard of his labors. The loss of him will be especially felt in the parish to which he had devoted the last years of his life, and for which he had done so much, and there will be abundant manifestations of the profound sorrow, which his decease has caused amongst his parishioners.

SKETCH OF HIS LIFE

Father Fox was born in the county of Wicklow, Ireland, in 1820, and his college days were spent at the Carlow institution, which is one of the highest in that country and to which no one who is not very proficient in his studies is admitted. He had as a fellow student Bishop Ryan, and both made great progress at the college. In 1849 he emigrated to the United States and on St. Peter and Paul’s day—the 29^th of June of that year—was ordained a priest by the Most Rev. Peter Richard Kenrick in this city. After his ordination he remained six month here in various capacities and was then transferred to Potosi, Washington County to take charge of the church there. He remained there one year and was next appointed successor of Father Cotter of Old Mines, in the same county.

At that time the country was in the condition of all newly opened territory, and the labors which devolved upon him were unusually arduous. His mission extended through Washington and into Jefferson, Iron, St. Francois and Crawford counties, he giving personal supervision to other churches than his own. He lived, or had his residence, at Old Mines eighteen years. It has been said that he lived on horseback, so large a portion of his time was he away from his home. He built the Old Mines, Irondale, Potosi and DeSoto churches, and was largely assisted in his work by Bishop Hogan of St. Joseph and Father Hays of this city, who had charge of the churches established by him. While at Old Mines, in 1868, he was appointed successor of Father Cavanaugh as pastor of Assumption church, St. Louis. He was eighteen or nineteen months at the Assumption and then in May,

… Father Wheeler, at Munich. While at the Assumption his zeal had found fitting employment in clearing off the debt of the church and in bringing the Sisters of St. Joseph from Carondelet to a convent in the parish. He was especially attached to children, and finding on his accession to the pastorate of St. Patrick’s that there were 2,500 or 3,000 of them in the parish without the opportunities for Catholic education, he at once actively interested himself in procuring the needed facilities and the result was the erection of St. Patrick’s school, which is considered the finest school in the city, public or private, and the finest parochial school in the United States. The school and ground cost upwards of $90,000. He looked upon it as his crowning effort, and sickness alone prevented him from witnessing the school in operation. His last words from the altar, the last time he officiated at the church, nearly six weeks ago, were that the school would be open for the children on the morrow. The morrow came, but it found him on a sick bed.

In connection with his labors at St. Patrick’s parish, it may be stated that he was successful in paying off a debt of $24,000, which there was on the church

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DECEASED

Father Fox was not an orator, and in the pulpit he devoted less attention to doctrinal points than to practical every day advice. He was a plain but forcible speaker and what he said acquired additional force from the zeal with which he was filled and which made itself manifest in all that he did. He was a very earnest worker; years ago he was the embodiment of the pioneer spirit; disregarded fatigue, and bore up under circumstances which would have overwhelmed many stronger men. In St. Patrick's parish he gave his whole energies to his work, and went from door to door urging his parishioners to a more faithful performance of their duties. His charities were uncircumscribed.

His health had always been frail, and it was kept so by his forgetting himself in his work. Some six weeks ago he was attacked with typhoid pleurisy, and his system, as it were, collapsed. It is thought that there were some evidences of consumption, which had been induced by exposure in all kinds of weather. The best of medical advice was obtained for him, and two of the Alexian brothers waited constantly upon him during the past month. He died with perfect resignation shortly after six o'clock yesterday morning. His confessor was Father Tschieter, S.J., of St. Joseph's church and the blessed sacrament was administered by Father Hays.

JOHN HOGAN AND JAMES FOX, FRONTIER PRIESTS AND LIFELONG FRIENDS

John Hogan, priest and bishop, and Father James Fox remained lifelong friends.  Father Fox continued his support of Hogan’s Ozarks settlement, sending cash and donating property. Hogan kept close accounting of the costs of building the wilderness settlement in a small pocket notebook, which rests now in the archives of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.  

 Hogan noted contributions for the construction of a log church in his Ozarks settlement.  Father Fox was most generous ($17.00)- especially when you consider that the actual cash cost for the log church in the wilderness came to $85.31 for material and labor.

 In addition to his cash contribution, Fox donated land for the church site. 

“Fox was issued a land patent on September 1, 1859 for 320 acres in Oregon County. The Irish pastor of Old Mines and Potosi donated it for the colony’s use. On this site, a forty-foot square log chapel and priest’s quarters were built by Father Hogan. On May 17, 1879, the property was sold for back taxes. For a long time, the outline of the church’s stone foundation was a visitable feature in “the priest’s field.” Through the years, the rocks have been appropriated for other building uses or removed to facilitate plowing. It is today a fescue pasture."

(Mystery of the Irish Wilderness,  page 48)

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"A MOCKERY OF SUBLIME ANTICIPATIONS" - John Joseph Hogan's first glimpse of America

It was 1848 - 165 years ago today that John Joseph Hogan, an eager, 19-year-old Irishman, first set eyes on America. Having gone as far as he could in his studies in Ireland, Hogan had decided he would go to America - St. Louis specifically - to study for the priesthood. Unlike most Irish emigrants, Hogan bypassed the East Coast, instead sailing from Liverpool aboard the clipper ship Berlin bound for New Orleans. 

December 14, 1848 was a Thursday – and foggy.  Young John Hogan, from the deck of the clipper ship, scanned the horizon eagerly for his first sight of America – his destined place. Anchored in the Gulf, waiting for tugboat escorts, they were greeted by the sediment load the Mississippi River carried to the Gulf. “Shrouded in fog banks, we anchored in muddy water that as far as the eye could reach, had befouled the color of the sea.” 

After five weeks and a day at sea, they had reached the mouth of the Mississippi. Hogan’s eager expectations were dashed at the sight of the muddy mingling of Gulf and river.

To a person from the British Isles, the United States, as seen at the mouths of the Mississippi, is a mockery of sublime anticipations. No bold headlands; no high, rocky bluffs; no cities on hills; no hills at all; no heathery uplands or daisied fields leading down to the sea; no murmuring sea, for there was no ebbing or flowing tide, not enough rise of tide to cover a croaking frog; no belt of strand to mark the boundary between land and water, for land and water seemed interlocked and of the amphibious kind—an impenetrable jungle of swamps and bushes, infested with sharks, snakes, and alligators. There was water enough, of the kind it was, but who dare drink of it? Ha! That from the marshes smelt of toads and reptiles; that from the Mississippi suggested a fish trap, for, besides mud, it may have a young alligator in it. And this is America—America indeed. Alas! No help for me now; I am on the Mississippi, and must go it. This ship I am on won't stop until I get to New Orleans; and if I throw myself overboard and attempt to swim ashore, maybe the alligators or the buzzards will get me. See the miserable, muddy banks, not high enough above water for a drowning rat to dry himself on.

From Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir by John Joseph Hogan. 

Undeterred by the impenetrable jungle that made a "mockery of sublime anticipations," Hogan pressed on, arriving in New Orleans the evening of December 15.   

The entire text of Hogan's memoir, Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir,  is contained in On the Mission in Missouri & Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir. On the Mission is his own account of his years as a pioneer priest in northwest and southeast Missouri (including his founding of the Irish Wilderness), spanning the Civil War and its immediate aftermath (1857-1868).  Both memoirs are included in one volume as well as extensive biographical information gleaned in our years of research.

Postscript:  Hogan was ordained in the Archdiocese of St.Louis in 1852. He later became the first bishop of St. Joseph, Missouri (1868); and in 1880, the first bishop of Kansas City, Missouri. He died in 1913.

IRISH WILDERNESS TAKES SHAPE IN THE OZARKS - 1858 - 1859

November, 1858: For more than a year, John Joseph Hogan with surveyors and friends had scouted  Missouri's southeastern Ozarks for arable land, filed claims for plots through the land agents of Cape Girardeau and found immigrant Irish who would settle the land and work a farm. Near the end of November 1858 – 155 years ago – Hogan again set out for his southern colony.  This fourth trip would be his longest (11 months) sojourn in the Ozarks and the most active months of development of the settlement he envisioned.

Interestingly – and a fact not noted in most official and unofficial histories of his settlement – Hogan did not prefer the deeper Ozarks.  In 1857, on his first reconnaissance trip, he had claimed land in the area around Ellsinore and along the Little Black River (“480 acres in a body on Ten Mile Creek”) finding it more suitable for agriculture and with “improved land enough” that they would not be starting from scratch.  However when he returned in the late fall of 1858, he found his plans had been dramatically changed.

Arrived at the settlement, I found a difficulty existing. In the district of country where I had bought land the year previous, intending to make the place the center of the proposed settlement, I found that all the government land, fit for cultivation, had in the meantime been bought by parties not Catholics, so that there was no longer a possibility of owning sufficient ground there to form a colony such as I had contemplated. There was improved land enough in the neighborhood that could be bought at a reasonable price and on easy conditions. But the cry was for government land and at government price.

Westward then, though very much against my will, I had to move about forty miles, to a region of country where there was yet much vacant government land, on the confines of Ripley and Oregon counties, along the tributaries of the Current and Eleven Point rivers, about twenty miles north of the state of Arkansas.

Colton's Missouri Map of 1875 clearly locates the central point of Father Hogan's colony on the Oregon/Ripley county line about 20 miles north of Arkansas and a few miles east of the Eleven Point River.  Locations lingered on printed maps sometimes well after their demise. 

From that point on, Hogan and arriving Irish immigrants were busy shaping this growing community.  In Hogan’s classic memoir, On the Mission in Missouri, he compresses the building activities of many months into a short paragraph:

Improvements went on apace; cutting down trees, splitting, rails, burning brushwood, making fences, grubbing roots and stumps, building houses, digging wells, opening roads, breaking and ploughing land, and sowing crops. Already in the spring of 1859, there were about forty families on the newly acquired government lands, or on improved farms purchased, east and west of Current River, in the counties of Ripley and Oregon; and many more were coming …

He mentions the log chapel built on "ground bought and donated by Reverend James Fox of Old Mines, Missouri: a one story log house forty feet square … partitioned into two apartments, one for the chapel and the other for the priest’s residence."  Perhaps the chapel was built while paperwork on the tract of land was in the works. In searching land records, we found that Reverend Fox was issued a land patent on September 1, 1859 (near the end of Hogan’s sojourn in the Ozarks) for 320 acres on Oregon County, which he donated to the flourishing colony. 

In the archives of the St. Louis Archdiocese is a small account book that Father Hogan kept during his time in the Ozarks. In it we found his enumeration of the cost of his log church in the pines: $85.31 (page 48, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness)

Hogan traveled back to Chillicothe at the end of October, 1859, ending his full time presence and oversight of the colony. One more brief trip – November 17 to mid-December 1859 – to southeast Missouri was his last. Soon the Civil War made travel perilous. Demands of his expanding missionary parish in northwest Missouri increased. Hogan remained in the north, but still recalled with affection and concern the settlers he had led to area.

Postscript: Long after the settlement had been scattered by the vagaries of war, another land record tells a sad story of the Irish settlement.  On May 17, 1879, the property Father Fox had donated to the colony for the log church was sold for back taxes.