The Heritage Museum and Cultural Center in St. Joseph will hold a presentation on the history of the Catholic Church in Berrien County next month.
The museum’s Dennis Szymanski tells us that history goes back as far as the 1600s, when the first French settlers moved into the area bringing priests with them.
“La Salle came with four Jesuit priests in and met the Pottawatomie Indians,” Szymanski said. “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 trade and sought a route to India via the Mississippi River when they first came into the area. They also wanted to convert the Pottawatomi people to Catholicism.
The first Catholic Church in the area was St. Joseph Catholic Church, founded in the 1800s at its current site, although originally with a different building.
Szymanski says the Heritage Museum has been working on an exhibit on local churches, and as part of that, he wanted to give a lecture on this one aspect of the area’s development.
The presentation will be August 1 at the Heritage Museum starting at 7 p.m. It will be free, and there’s a Zoom option available. Check the website of the Heritage Museum for more information.
