Antoine Langlois (1812-1892) was a Catholic priest that acted as a missionary in the Pacific Northwest and later California.
Anthony Langlois was born in Saint-Pierre-de-la-Rivière-du-Sud, Quebec, on 10 November 1812. [1] Langlois studied at Collège de Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière. He was ordained as a minister by Pierre-Flavien Turgeon at Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec in 1838. [1] After several assignments in Quebec, Langlois joined Jean-Baptiste Bolduc on a journey to the Pacific Northwest to aid Catholic conversion efforts there.
Langlois departed from Boston on 14 September 1841 and sailed for the Pacific Ocean via the Cape Horn. [2] Their vessel visited the port of Valparaíso at the end of December, where they waited for 63 days for another ship to continue ferrying them. They then went across Oceania to visit the Gambier Islands and other parts of the Polynesian Triangle. Next Langlois and Bolduc on 5 May 1842 reached the Kingdom of Tahiti. The two priests had a meeting with Queen Pōmare IV to explain their status as British subjects rather than French. [3]
Heading north from Tahiti, on 21 June their ship reached the Kingdom of Hawaii. Greeted by fellow Catholic Louis Désiré Maigret, he informed the two priests that they had to wait several days for the next ship to visit Honolulu, the Hudson's Bay Company barge Cowlitz. [3] On 18 August the Cowlitz left the port of Honolulu for the Columbia River. [4]
Disembarking at Fort George on 19 September, the Catholics met priests from the Methodist Mission departing the region for the United States of America. [4] Langlois and Bolduc on 15 October reached Fort Vancouver where they were greeted by John McLoughlin. [5] The two priests reached St. Paul on 17 October after traveling through the Willamette Valley and Oregon City. [6] Vicar general François Blanchet, their superior, after having the men join him in performing religious services, gave them their appointments. Langlois was to remain at St. Paul while Bolduc was to winter at the St. Francis Xavier Mission. [6]
Over the next six years Langlois was often stationed at St. Francis Xavier to proselytise among the Cowlitz people. [1] During this time he met members of the Jesuit Order, such as Michael Accolti, John Nobili and Pierre-Jean De Smet, who likely had an influence on him in considering joining the order. [1] Intending to study further in Quebec, Langlois departed from the Pacific Northwest early in 1849.
While in the Boomtown of San Francisco, Father Jean Baptiste Brouillet convinced Langlois to remain there to administer the spiritual needs of the California Gold Rush city. [1] He was active in the city until at least 1853. [7] Bishop Joseph Alemany of the Diocese of Monterey appointed Langlois as vicar of the northern half of the spiritual district. [1] He joined the Dominican Order in 1853 and remained an active member until the late 1860s. Langlois later was appointed to be the pastor in Spanishtown on the coast, arriving on 21 July 1866 and remained until 1872. [8] Langlois' last position was as chaplain of the Congregation of Christian Brothers in Oakland, later appointment to an additional location in Martinez during 1872. [1] Langlois died on 9 May 1892.
Fort Vancouver was a 19th century fur trading post that was the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company's Columbia Department, located in the Pacific Northwest. Named for Captain George Vancouver, the fort was located on the northern bank of the Columbia River in present-day Vancouver, Washington. The fort was a major center of the regional fur trading. Every year trade goods and supplies from London arrived either via ships sailing to the Pacific Ocean or overland from Hudson Bay via the York Factory Express. Supplies and trade goods were exchanged with a plethora of Indigenous cultures for fur pelts. Furs from Fort Vancouver were often shipped to the Chinese port of Guangzhou where they were traded for Chinese manufactured goods for sale in the United Kingdom. At its pinnacle, Fort Vancouver watched over 34 outposts, 24 ports, six ships, and 600 employees. Today, a full-scale replica of the fort, with internal buildings, has been constructed and is open to the public as Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.
The Archdiocese of Québec is a Catholic archdiocese in Quebec, Canada. Being the first see in the New World north of Mexico, the Archdiocese of Québec is also the primatial see for Canada. The Archdiocese of Québec is also the ecclesiastical provincial for the dioceses of Chicoutimi, Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière and Trois-Rivières. The archdiocese's cathedral is Notre-Dame de Québec in Quebec City.
The term Cowlitz people covers two culturally and linguistically distinct indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest; the Lower Cowlitz or Cowlitz proper, and the Upper Cowlitz / Cowlitz Klickitat or Taitnapam. Lower Cowlitz refers to a southwestern Coast Salish people, which today are enrolled in the federally recognized tribes: Cowlitz Indian Tribe, Quinault Indian Nation, and Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation. The Upper Cowlitz or Taitnapam, is a Northwest Sahaptin speaking people, part of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation.
The Oregon missionaries were pioneers who settled in the Oregon Country of North America starting in the 1830s dedicated to bringing Christianity to local Native Americans. There had been missionary efforts prior to this, such as those sponsored by the Northwest Company with missionaries from the Church of England starting in 1819. The Foreign Mission movement was already 15 years underway by 1820, but it was difficult to find missionaries willing to go to Oregon, as many wanted to go to the east, to India or China. It was not until the 1830s, when a schoolmaster from Connecticut, Hall Jackson Kelley, created his "American Society for the Settlement of the Oregon Country," that more interest and support for Oregon missionaries grew. Around the same time, four Nez Perce arrived in St. Louis in the fall of 1831, with accounts differencing as to if these travelers were asking for “the book of life,” an idea used by Protestant missionaries, or if they asked for “Blackrobes,” meaning Jesuits, thus Catholic missionaries. Either way this inspired Christian missionaries to travel to the Oregon Territory. Oregon missionaries played a political role, as well as a religious one, as their missions established US political power in an area in which the Hudson’s Bay Company, operating under the British government, maintained a political interest in the Oregon country. Such missionaries had an influential impact on the early settlement of the region, establishing institutions that became the foundation of United States settlement of the Pacific Northwest.
Joseph-Norbert Provencher was a Canadian clergyman and missionary and one of the founders of the modern province of Manitoba. He was the first Bishop of Saint Boniface and was an important figure in the history of the Franco-Manitoban community.
Étienne Jérôme Rouchouze SS.CC. was a French Catholic missionary in the Eastern Pacific.
Jean-Baptiste Thibault was a Roman Catholic priest and missionary noted for his role in negotiating on behalf of the Government of Canada during the Red River Rebellion of 1869–1870. He also established the first Roman Catholic mission in what would become Alberta, at Lac Sainte Anne in 1842.
The Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon is an archdiocese of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It encompasses the western part of the state of Oregon, from the summit of the Cascades to the Pacific Ocean. The Archbishop of Portland serves as the Ordinary of the archdiocese and Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Portland whose suffragan dioceses cover the entire three states of Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. The dioceses of the province include Baker, Boise (Idaho), Helena, and Great Falls-Billings.
François Norbert Blanchet was a French Canadian-born missionary priest and prelate of the Catholic Church who was instrumental in establishing the Catholic Church presence in the Pacific Northwest. He was one of the first Catholic priests to arrive in what was then known as the Oregon Country and subsequently became the first bishop and archbishop of the Archdiocese of Oregon City.
Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier was the first Roman Catholic bishop in New Zealand and, with priests and brothers of the Marist order, he organised the Roman Catholic Church throughout the country. He was born in Lyon, France. He arrived in New Zealand in 1838 as Vicar Apostolic of Western Oceania, but made New Zealand the Headquarters of His Catholic Mission.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint-Boniface is a Latin archdiocese in part of the civil Province of Manitoba in Canada. Despite having no suffragan dioceses, the archdiocese is nominally metropolitan and is an ecclesiastical province by itself. It is currently led by Archbishop Albert LeGatt.
Father Pierre Gibault was a Jesuit missionary and priest in the Northwest Territory in the 18th century, and an American Patriot during the American Revolution.
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Augustin Magloire Alexandre Blanchet was a French Canadian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the first bishop of the now-defunct Diocese of Walla Walla and of the Diocese of Nesqually in present-day Washington State.
Louis Catherin Servant was a French priest and missionary to New Zealand.
Marie-Nicolas-Antoine Daveluy was a French missionary and saint. His feast day is March 30, and he is also venerated along with the rest of the 103 Korean martyrs on September 20.
Fort Cowlitz or Cowlitz Farm was an agricultural operation by the British Puget Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC), a subsidiary of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). It was located on the Cowlitz plains, adjacent to the west bank of the Cowlitz River and several miles northeast of modern Toledo, Washington. The farm was begun during spring of 1839, and its produce soon supplied HBC posts in New Caledonia and Columbia Departments. In the RAC-HBC Agreement, the Russian-American Company received at Novo-Arkhangelsk grain and dairy products from the PSAC along with manufactured goods. Fort Cowlitz produced most of the Company wheat quotas, and its fellow PSAC station Fort Nisqually tended most of the sheep and cattle flocks. By the expiration of the agreement in 1850, Cowlitz Farm wasn't able to meet Russian supply demands.
The Nisqually Mission was a branch of the Methodist Mission, the only one established north of the Columbia River, outside Fort Nisqually in modern DuPont, Washington, United States. The station was actively used for two years, from 1840 to 1842, until its missionary John P. Richmond returned to the United States of America.
Jean-Baptiste-Zacharie Bolduc was a Québécois Jesuit. His career started as a missionary in the Pacific Northwest, where he resided for eight years. Later he worked in the Catholic medical efforts in Québec.
The Saint Francis Xavier Mission, in Lewis County, Washington three miles north of present-day Toledo, Washington, was the first Catholic mission in what is now the U.S. state of Washington and is now the oldest Catholic church in the state. The first Mass (liturgy) was offered there December 16, 1838, by François Norbert Blanchet, who co-founded the mission with Modeste Demers, Although that is considered the founding date, the mission cemetery predates the mission as such, having been started by the Hudson's Bay Company approximately in 1831. The mission, which originally occupied 640 acres of Cowlitz Prairie, is also known as the Cowlitz Mission and, especially by members of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, as Saint Mary's after a girl's boarding school that operated there from 1911 to 1973.