St. Augustine's: the first Catholic parish

Land purchased 1831 — parish erected 1836 — first resident pastor 1836

Badin and the land: The Catholic thread resumes a decade after the Presbyterians. Father Stephen Badin — the first priest ordained in the United States — was placed in charge of the Potawatomi mission in Indiana in 1830, and the diocesan history records that he presided at the first Catholic baptism of record in Fort Wayne in 1831 and later at the first Catholic marriage of record. Badin negotiated with Chief Jean-Baptiste de Richardville, and on 18 July 1831 Catholic pioneers purchased a large part of what is now Cathedral Square; the cathedral still stands on ground bought that day, one southwest acre of it purchased from John T. Barr for 100 dollars.

The parish: In 1836 the Diocese of Vincennes named the Rev. Louis Mueller Fort Wayne's first resident pastor, and St. Augustine Parish was erected — the first parish in the city. Its first church, a small log or frame building on the square, is dated differently by the sources: Blanchard's History of the Catholic Church in Indiana (1898) says the first Catholic house of worship at Fort Wayne was "a small, frame weather-boarded shanty, erected in 1837 on the site of the present cathedral-edifice, and was known as St. Augustine's"; the cathedral's modern retelling puts a log church in 1839 (a parish history site gives a temporary log structure in 1835 and a permanent one in 1837). The parish, not the building date, is the fixed point: erected 1836, on the square from the beginning. In 1840 the French-born Father Julian Benoit succeeded Mueller; Benoit would serve Fort Wayne for more than half a century, and it was he who designed the cathedral that replaced St. Augustine's (see the diocese entry below).

Sources:

1. Today's Catholic (Diocese of Fort Wayne–South Bend), "Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception marks 150th anniversary of dedication," 5 December 2010 — Badin, the 1831 baptism and marriage, the 18 July 1831 purchase, Mueller 1836, Benoit 1840.
2. Charles Blanchard, ed., History of the Catholic Church in Indiana, vol. I (1898) — the 1837 frame church known as St. Augustine's.
3. "Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Fort Wayne, Indiana)," Wikipedia, summarizing the cathedral's published history — parish erected 1836, log church 1839; and historic-structures.com's cathedral entry (log structures 1835/1837), the variants carried here.