In
the year 1806, a large colony of immigrants arrived from France and settled at
Shippingport and 
Portland, two small hamlets along the south bank of the
Ohio River a mile or two below the falls. This French colonization project was
sponsored by two brothers, John A. and Louis Tarascon.
An 1814 the site of Portland, which was the property of William Lytle, was surveyed and plotted under his direction by Alexander Ralston. An addition was laid out in 1817, for the same proprietor, by Joel Wright. A peculiar division prevailed in the town-plot, the two parts being known as ‘Portland Proper’ and ‘The Enlargement of Portland.’ The lots in the Proper plot or half acre size, and sold readily for $200 each, increasing in price by 1819 to $500 and $1,000. The Enlargement comprised lots ¾ of an acre in size, at the corresponding price, $300 apiece.
Dr. McMurtrie’s Sketches of Louisville in 1819 said: “But a small portion of this extensive place is as yet occupied by houses. Some very handsome ones, however, are now erecting in Portland proper and among the than a very extensive brick warehouse, belonging to Captain H. M. Shreve. The property in this place lately attracted the attention of a number of wealthy men, who seemed determined to improve to the utmost every advantage in possesses, and as it is not so subject to inundation as some of the adjoining places its future destinies may be considered as those of a highly flourishing and important town.”
Dana’s Geographical Sketches said of this village in 1819: began “It is a flourishing place, a street ninety-nine feet wide, having communication with Louisville, extends along the highest bank above the whole length of the town. It contains three warehouses, several stores and one good tavern.”
‘Personal reflections of Louisville’ in The Courier Journal of May 12, 1935, gives a very interesting paragraph: “Before the Louisville and Portland canal was finished in 1830, the first tramway in the United States was built connecting Louisville with Portland.”
The Herald Post of February 19, 1935, under the caption ‘Relics of the Old South Reclaimed,’ carries many points of historical interest to us:
The packet trade centered at the foot of 34th Street made this one of the busiest and most popular sections of Louisville.
Situated on Commercial (now 34th Street) near First Street (Missouri) is the site of the St. Charles Hotel, once the famous hostelry of the South, and the forerunner of the Galt House.
There were many river pilots among the residents of Portland, and no wonder, at the close of 1855, forty-one steamboats had been built in Portland.
It may be noted here that the St. Charles Hotel was owned and operated by Charles Maquaire and later by his son-in-law, Paul Villier, who originally built the hotel.
In the 1840s the river front in Portland had a far different appearance from the one we view today. Then big steamboats piled the river, receiving and distributing cargoes of freight from New Orleans to Cincinnati; the staccato whistle, the clanging bell, could be heard throughout Portland as the crews prepared to anchor the boats. Many of the men would hasten to the little church around the corner to assist at Mass after their boats tied up.
Tradition tells us that the packets and barges were not the only boats. There was a ferry line between Portland and New Albany. In later years, the ‘Tom Connor,’ the ‘Frank McHarry’ and the ‘Music’ built with an upper deck, were sometimes used for excursions. It is said that the parishioners of Our Lad’s Church would take the ‘Music’ to go to Sugar Grove, a picnic-ground some twelve miles below Portland on the Indiana side of the river. Often the number was so large that the ‘Frank McHarry’ was also pressed into service.
Charles Dickens, in his American Notes, writes of Portland as a ‘Suburb of Louisville,’ and mentions a delay in passing through the locks.
From the year to 1806 to the year 1811, Fr. Badin’s visits
to Shippingport and Portland were frequent, most likely once a month. Fr.
Badin planned to build a church in Louisville, but his hopes were not realized
until May, 1811, when the contract was made for the erection of the building.
This church was dedicated to St. Louis, King of France, and stood on the corner
of Tenth and Main Streets. It was opened for services on the following
Christmas, but was not completed for several years. As time went on Louisville, Shippingport and Portland continued to grow. The immigration from France
had practically ceased by 1826, and in its place had come natives of Ireland
and Germany.
Fr. Badin has long seen the need of a church in Portland. The distance from Portland to Tenth and Main Streets proved a hard-ship for many, especially to the old and feeble. This distance became a greater when the site of St. Louis was transferred to the east side of Fifth Street, where the Cathedral of the Assumption now stands. It was at this time, 1837-38, that as it is supposed, he inaugurated the movement which brought about the organization of the congregation and subsequent erection of Church of Our Lady. He encouraged the people of Portland to petition the Bishop, and so it came to pass that in 1839, Bishop Chabrat nominated a pastor for Portland in the person of the Rev. Napoleon J. Perche. He was then president of the diocesan seminary at Bardstown.
At the time, the names of the three ecclesiastics were outstanding in Kentucky: Bishop Flaget, his Coadjutor, Bishop Chabrat and the proto sacerdos, Fr. Badin. As all three were intimately connected with the formation of the parish of Our Lady, this is an account of their lives.
Benedict Joseph Flaget
First Bishop of Bardstown and Louisville
‘The Saintly Flaget!’ is the epithet
all posterity applies to the first bishop of the first diocese west of the
Alleghenies. Right Rev. Benedict Joseph Flaget was born in Billom, France,
November 8, 1764. Ordained at 24 years of age at Issy, France,
he came to America as a missionary in 1791 and was stationed at Vincennes,
Indiana. He visited Louisville for the first time in 1792.
When Pope Pius VII erected Bardstown into an episcopal see, he appointed Rev. Benedict Joseph Flaget, a Sulpician, April 8, 1808, as its first bishop. The new diocese embraced the states of Kentucky and Tennessee, and its Bishop was given spiritual jurisdiction not only over his own diocese proper, but also, until other diocese might presently be formed, over the whole Northwest Territory. From this Mother-See of the West were formed ten dioceses during the life of its first saintly Bishop. Though the bulls for his consecration reached him in September 1808, the consecration did not take place until November 4, 1810, when Bishop Carroll consecrated him in St. Patrick’s Church, Baltimore.
The record of Bishop Flaget’s trials and triumphs is written not only in the history of the foundation and development of this diocese through its first fifty years, but in the histories of many other diocese and in those of the Orders of Sisters founded under his jurisdiction. This saintly son of France toiled almost sixty years and firmly planting Catholicity in Kentucky and the Middle West, and carefully and untiringly covering his vast diocese from the Allegheny Mountains to the Mississippi, when the bishop’s carriage was the horse’s saddle.
He died in Louisville, February 11, 1850, during the construction of the present Cathedral of the Assumption, and was buried, at his own request, and the plot of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, Eighth Street. His remains were later transferred to a crypt in the Undercroft of the Cathedral of the Assumption.
Rev. Guy Ignatius Chabrat
Guy Ignatius Chabrat (right) was born in the
village of Chambre, France, where he was carefully reared and educated. He was
ordained sub-deacon at one of the French Sulpician seminaries in 1809, and, at
the earliest solicitation of Bishop Flaget, who was in France
at this time, the young sub-deacon resolved to share his arduous duties. So it
was that in company with the Bishop and Fr. John B. David, he came to Kentucky
in the summer of 1811. The succeeding seven months were devoted to study and
he was ordained priest by Bishop Flaget on December 25, 1811, in the Dominican
Church of St. Rose. This was the first ordination that had taken place in Kentucky and in the territory of the United States west of Baltimore.
Fr. Chabrat’s first charge was St. Michael’s in Nelson County and St. Clare’s in Hardin County. An 1824 he was appointed ecclesiastical superior of the Sisters of Loretto.
An 1834 he received from Rome the bulls for his consecration as Bishop of Bolina and coadjutor of the Bishop of Bardstown. He was consecrated bishop at Bardstown, July 20, 1834. When Bishop Chabrat was forced to resign by reason of his approaching blindness, he retired in 1847 on a comfortable pension to his old home in France. He died in the thirty-fourth year of his episcopate.
Rev. Stephen Theodore Badin
Born in the beautiful and historic city of Orleans, France, on July 17, 1768, this child of destiny was privileged to grow up under
the influence of God-fearing parents. Because he refused to forswear his
conscience and promise allegiance to the government Napoleon had set up, and
because he refused to accept the priestly ordination of the hands of his
disloyal bishop who had taken the odious constitutional oath,
persecution stretched out to seize him. The experience was soul-harrowing, but
the Providence of God awakened in his soul the divine call to spend his life
and be spent in molding the destiny of the Catholics in the New World.
Received as sub-deacon by the venerable Bishop Carroll of Baltimore, he completed his ecclesiastical studies and mastered the rudiments of English. The diocese of Bishop Carroll Embraced the whole United States, and Fr. Badin was the first fruits of his consecrated hands. He was ordained in St. Peter’s Cathedral, Baltimore, Maryland on May 25, 1793. In after years, Fr. Badin always signed his name in the Church records, “S. T. Badin, Proto Sa (credos) Baltim (orensis), First priests of Baltimore.” To him will always remain the glory of being the first priest ordained in the United States.
From the day, September 6, 1793, when Fr. Badin first
turned his face toward Kentucky, he answered up on the career of zeal and self-sacrifice
which continued until he laid down his worn and wasted body in death. During
his missionary journeys, he traveled 100,000 miles in the saddle. Often a sick
call required a journey of fifty or even seventy-five or eighty miles into the
forest, on the darkest nights, in the piercing winter, sometimes without a
guide and always over rough roads. When he came to Kentucky, a young, active
and energetic priest, even the strongest man wondered how he could endure so
much, but even unto his patriarchal years he continued the herculean labors and
almost incredible hardships of his youth. Archbishop Spalding tells us that
the often suffered from the very necessaries of life, that his clothing was
scant and fashioned from the rough fabrics of the country, that his food was of
the courses and seldom of sufficient quantity. Instead of settling down in a
single parish, he moved from place to place covering all of Kentucky and large
parts of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio in his labors.
Fr. Badin (photo right) has often been likened to St. Paul. Both men were of small stature, both were intense temperaments. St. Paul tells us in his second Epistle to the Corinthians that he suffered from many perils. Fr. Badin was, likewise, often in peril of death from the white man and the red, from hunger and cold. The howl of the wolf and the shriek of the panther often awoke him from his slumber on the cold, hard ground, and the swollen, impassable river frequently bore him close to death.
Again and again he found himself alone on the Kentucky mission. Once he was for nearly three years the only priests in this vast region; once he was so remote from a brother-priest that for twenty-one months he could not go to confession. He stands forth a self-sacrificing priest, a courageous pioneer who knew no fear, a missionary to whom the saving of a soul was more than the conquest of an empire or the riches of kings, a pastor who showed the tender affection as well as the sternness of a real father, the proto-priest whom Fr. Nerinckx calls ‘The Founder of the Church in Kentucky.’ He was absent from the diocese from 1830 till 1837, and on his return became Vicar General.
Fr. Badin’s last public appearance in Louisville was on the fifteenth of August, 1849, on the occasion of the laying of the cornerstone of the Cathedral of the Assumption. He died April 21, 1853, and was buried in the former Cathedral of Cincinnati. His body was moved to the University of Notre Dame in 1904. Fr. Badin had donated land from a farm he owned to the university.
Rev. Napoleon J. Perche
The first pastor of the Church of Our Lady, Rev. Napoleon
J. Perche (left), was born January 10, 1805, at Angers, France. He was
a most precocious child and could read at four. At eighteen he was professor
of philosophy and at twenty-four he was ordained at the seminary of Beaupre,
September 19, 1829. He served in various pastorates in France
until 1837, when he came to America. It was, doubtless, at this time that he
met Bishop Flaget who had gone to Europe in 1835. The Bishop became ill while
visiting Angers in 1837, and remained there some time. He induced the Rev. N
.J. Perche to come to Kentucky with him and assist him in his vast territory.
His first appointment was as teacher in St. Thomas Seminary. Later, in 1839,
he was given charge of Portland with its missions.
Wishing to raise money to build a church for his parishioners, Fr. Perche obtained permission to go to New Orleans. There in St. Louis Cathedral he preached such eloquent sermons in French that the Creoles soon subscribed the money he needed, and Archbishop Antoine Blanc offered him an appointment and urged him to come to Louisiana permanently, where he could accomplish more good than he was likely to effect in Kentucky. Fr. Perche, however, asked to be allowed to go back to Kentucky and finish the church he was building. This work accomplished, he returned to New Orleans, and in 1842 he became Chaplain of the Ursuline Convent, a post he filled for twenty-eight years, seeking no advancement and ever ready to preach when summoned. His eloquence acquired for him both fame and influence.
Archbishop John Mary Odin petitioned Rome for the appointment of Fr. Perche as his coadjutor with the right of succession. His request was granted and, May 1, 1870, Fr. Perche was consecrated with imposing ceremonies in the Cathedral of New Orleans. On that occasion the orator, the Rev. Jeremiah Moynihan, spoke in eloquent terms of the admiration, love and veneration entertained by the people of the diocese for the new bishop. He was a man of great energy, far-seeing judgment and great eloquence. His great charity and his personal interest in the poor endeared him to all the people.
The new Bishop was not long coadjutor bishop, as Archbishop Odin died on May 25, 1870, and Perche became Archbishop and assumed the direction of the diocese of New Orleans. He endowed his diocese with a contemplative community, the Carmelite nuns of the reform of St. Teresa, an affiliate of the convent in St. Louis; and one of his last acts was an appeal in their behalf on the occasion of the tercentenary of the great Spanish Carmelite nun.
Under his zealous direction Thibodeaux College and St. Mary’s Commercial College were opened, the ladies of the Sacred Heart established a third academy, three other academies and thirteen parish schools were opened in his time, and the Little Sisters of the Poor founded an asylum for aged colored women. Ten new churches and many chapels marked the growth of the diocese, and the number of priests increased one-fifth.
In 1872 he inaugurated an annual service of thanksgiving for the victory of the Battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815.
Archbishop Perche was a great scholar. His gentleness, energy, sound judgment, and eloquence, caused Pope Leo XIII to call him the ‘Bossuet of the American Church.’
Toward the close of the year 1883, his vital powers began to fail, and though removal to the country seemed to invigorate him, he grew weaker on his return to the city. In December he saw that the end was at hand; fortified by the Sacraments, he died of old age on Thursday, December 27, 1883.
His death occasioned a profound sensation throughout Louisiana. In New Orleans the grief was universal. The remains lay in state at St. Mary’s Archepiscopal Church, and thousands paid him a last tribute of respect. The obsequies, which took place on January second, were of very imposing character. The procession included, in addition to the Catholic clergy, the state and city officials, military officers, the various Catholics societies, the Sisters of Charity and of Mercy in charge of the Catholic asylums in New Orleans. The Right Rev. F. X. Lerdy officiated at the Cathedral of the Assumption, assisted by the clergy of Louisiana and other states.
The mortal remains of Fr. Perche, the first pastor of the Church of Our Lady, rest in New Orleans Louisiana.
Just as divine providence gave us worthy and capable ecclesiastics to meet the conditions of those pioneer days, so it likewise raised up among the laity, men gifted with unusual ability and leadership. This was especially true of Portland. Blessed indeed was the early congregation in having such men as Charles Maquaire, Eugene Perrot, Louis Fosse and William Banon, who were the first trustees and comprised the committee of the management of the newly formed parish.
The First Trustees
Charles Maquaire
Companionship has a marked effect on character; in frequent association with friends we are slowly but surely fashioned to their likeness, and sooner or later we find the good or evil of their lives present into our own.
It is natural that, measured by this standard, Charles Maquaire, who “was a fast friend of Fr. Badin,” should be zealous for the spread of religion in the new settlement. Fr. Badin was a frequent visitor at the Maquaire home, and had a room at his disposal at all times.
Mr. William Banon, Mr. Eugene Perrot and Mr. Charles Maquaire were appointed by Fr. Badin as members of a provisional committee of management for the building of the church in the town of Portland, Kentucky, and later Charles Maquaire was one of the first trustees of the parish.
According to tradition he was likewise an intimate friend of Bishop Flaget, who not only baptized his granddaughter, Josephine Villier, but was also her godfather, while Sr. Eulalie (the bishop’s niece) stood for her as godmother.
Notwithstanding the fact that he was a merchant and not a civil engineer, Mr. Maquaire is given credit for having laid out that section of the old town which was known as Portland in the 1830s. The old streets are straight and wide, running from the river south, Fulton (33rd), Commercial (34th), Grove (35th), and Ferry (36th), to Market Street (Rudd Avenue). Trees were planted too, many of which remain today, beautiful still, especially on the site of the old St. Charles Hotel.
Charles Maquaire was born in Paris in 1803. With a Frenchman’s innate love and appreciation of liberty, he came to America and became an American citizen in 1835.
The Louisville Directory of 1836 gives “McQuaire (the name mutilated then as now) clothier on Water between 5th and 6th Streets.” In the 1838 Directory the name is given as “McQuain, Chas. & Co., grocer and clothier, Water cor. 3rd house in Portland.” The 1843-44 Directory lists: “Maquaire & Villier, Merchants, Portland, house at store, Water and Commercial Streets.”
When his daughter, Thaise Eugenie, finished school in France, he sent for her. She married Paul Villier, according to the church records, on May 27, 1843.
Mr. Maquaire was accidentally drowned in the neighborhood of Aurora, Indiana, while on his way to meet the brother who was coming from France. The first intimation that something had happened to him became evident when the brother arrived in Portland unaccompanied by Mr. Maquaire. A search was begun at once but in vain, and it was only after a reward was offered by the body, which had been buried near the scene of the accident, was recovered, disinterred and brought home.
Mr. Maquaire retained many of the French customs, and had always expressed a desire to be carried to the grave according to the manner of the French. Accordingly on Thanksgiving Day, 1853, twelve men carried the casket from the house to the church and from the church to the Portland Cemetery.
Eugene C. Perrot
Eugene C. Perrot, member of the provisional committee of management, and the second on the list of the first trustees of the Church of Our Lady, was likewise a native of France. He was born in Lacote, France, 1789. In the early part of 1806, he came to Shippingport with the Tarascons. He resided in this vicinity over a quarter of a century before the erection of the church. Holy Mass Was frequently said in his home during that time.
In the 1832 Louisville Directory, the earliest on record:” Eugene Perrot, dry goods; Water St., between 4th & Donne’s Alley.” He also listed in the 1836 directory as “retail merchant N.S. Main cor. Sixth.” According to the Directory of 1838 he was established as merchant in Portland, with Peter Marchand as his clerk. Evidently Mr. Perrot was a charitable man and strove to lay up treasure in heaven, for on his tombstone in the Portland Cemetery reads: Died October 20, 1856 - He was the protector of the widow and orphan - Pray for him
Louis Fosse
Louis Fosse was also one of the first trustees at the establishment of the church in Portland. When quite young, Louis Fosse was enrolled in Napoleon’s corps of bridge-builders, and followed his general to Moscow. In that famous retreat, being attacked by the Cossacks, and wounded in the thigh by a lance, he was stripped and left for dead in the snow. Revived he made his way to a shepherd’s hut where he procured a garb of sheep skins. He finally made his way to his native land, and during many hardships on the way. He married at twenty-seven. In 1835 he and his wife Margaret, and five children immigrated to America. When they first came to Portland, they lived in the old brick house in Cedar Grove. After the Sisters of Loretto acquired the property, this house became known as the ‘wash-house.’ A few years ago, it was remodeled and is one of the most attractive houses in Cedar Grove Court today.
The Louisville Directory of 1848 gives: “Louis Fausett, merchant, house market above railroad, Portland.” Mrs. Margaret Fosse celebrated her hundredth birthday in 1888. She lived to be 103 and died in the house on market street (Rudd Avenue) above the railroad.
When Louis Fosse visited France in 1850, he was decorated by Napoleon III. He died in 1865 and is buried in Portland Cemetery. He lies near Mr. Maquaire, Mr. Banon and Mr. Perrot.
John Edward Fosse, son of John and Josephine the Delora Fosse, and grandson of Louis and Margaret Fosse, was instrumental in procuring the present Stations of the Cross for the church. He canvassed the parish, and having some money remaining after paying for the Stations, he purchased the statue of St. Anthony, which was destroyed in the 1937 flood.
William Banon
William Banon, member of the provisional committee of management, and forth on the list of trustees, was born in Ireland in 1801. He married Helen Kelly and moved to Canada, and thence to Louisville, Kentucky, where he established a home at eighth and Jefferson. The Louisville Directory of 1836 lists him as a ‘retail grocer on the north side of Main between 10th and 11th Sts.’ He moved to Portland in the latter part of 1836.
Before he moved from Main Street he bought a plot of ground in Portland, consisting of 100 acres, laying north of what is now Main Street and south of Bank Street, known as Banon’s Thicket. Banon’s Lane, running through the tract, is now 38th Street. After he came to Portland, Mr. Banon must have made an offer to farm a part, at any rate, of his hundred acres, as for some years in the Louisville Directories, he is listed as a Farmer. In a later Directory he is given as gentlemen, most likely because of this tract of land.
In Portland the Banons lived at the corner of Ferry and Front Streets, and a large building of three stories and a half, the lower part of stone. Mrs. Banon occupied this house until her death in 1881. Before the parish was founded in 1839, Holy Mass was often said in this home on a bureau, which was the treasured possession of the children until it was lost in the flood of 1884.
An intimate friend of Mr. Banon, Mr. Thomas Drew, bequeathed $1,000 for the establishment of a free school for Catholic girls. It is suppose that Mr. Drew made this request at the request of Mr. Banon, who also left $1,000 for this purpose. (Court House Record, Deed Book 4).
Mr. Banon was small in stature, a typical Irish gentleman, meticulously careful of his personal parents, and usually seen on horseback. He died in 1852 at the age of 51 years and is buried in the Portland Cemetery. Ten children were born to William Banon and Ellen Kelly. Several died as small children. Only one continued to live in Portland, Thomas, born 1835, died at the age of 84 years. He, holding tightly to his Sr. Catherine’s hand, saw the cornerstone of the church laid in 1840. He remained a member of the congregation until his death in 1919.
