Most Precious Blood Catholic Church (1897)

Catholic parish of the northwest side · founded 1897 by the Missionaries of the Precious Blood · 1515 Barthold Street · active, November 2026

Founding: The parish was a foundation of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, the order to which Bishop Dwenger himself had belonged before his episcopate. Dwenger had envisioned a parish in the Bloomingdale district; his successor, Bishop Rademacher, invited the Society to make it, and in 1897 the Missionaries bought land between Fourth and Barthold Streets. The first pastor, Father Frank Nigsch, took a census and found 155 Catholic families of the neighborhood attending other parishes; those families became the founders.

Building line: A combined church and school was erected in 1898, and the school opened the same year. The present church was built in 1911; the diocesan newspaper's anniversary account notes that the original structure remains within the parish plant. A new school was planned in 1929 as enrollment grew from 250 to 450. The Sentinel's 1904 roster captions a photograph of the parish's pastor of that year, the Rev. Chrysostom Hummer.

Present state: Active. The Missionaries of the Precious Blood staffed parish and school from the founding until 2005. The parish celebrated its 125th anniversary on 16–17 September 2023. Its overflow a half-century on is part of this gazetteer's story: Queen of Angels, below, was founded in 1947 expressly to receive it.

Sources:

1. Today's Catholic, 14 September 2017 (1907 History of Church of the Most Precious Blood, and the parish's anniversary accounts): founding, Nigsch census, 1898 and 1911 buildings, the order's tenure to 2005.
2. Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana, church list: "Most Precious Blood Catholic Church, Wayne Township, 1897, active."
3. Fort Wayne Sentinel, 15 October 1904 (Rev. Chrysostom Hummer, pastor).