The churches before this one — Badin's chapel and the Old Church of 1848

1832 – 1875 · the succession on the ground

The mission line: The Basilica's own tour history begins the line long before the building: Fr. Claude Allouez established a mission on the south shore of St. Mary's Lake in 1686, Ste.-Marie-des-Lacs, serving the Potawatomi and the French of the area; after the French and Indian War the missionaries were expelled, and in 1832 Fr. Stephen Badin — the first Catholic priest ordained in the United States — re-established the mission. Sorin and seven Holy Cross brothers arrived in November 1842, assumed the mission, renamed it Notre Dame du Lac, and Sorin replaced Badin's chapel with a much larger chapel, which served the community until 1848.

The Old Church: In 1848 the community built the church the record calls the Old Church of the Sacred Heart. The published account of it gives its course in dates: construction began on 25 May 1848; it was dedicated on 12 November 1848; and it was solemnly consecrated on 11 November 1849 by Bishop Maurice de St. Palais of Vincennes. It stood next to the college building, built in the Carpenter Gothic manner with twin towers on its front. The university's 175th-anniversary timeline calls it "a substantial upgrade that included a small organ and bell tower," and the college church until 1870. Its size is one of the record's open small conflicts: the Basilica's self-guided tour gives ninety feet long, thirty feet wide and twenty-four feet high; the published history account gives ninety long, thirty-eight wide and twenty high. Both stand as published; the length agrees.

Its organ, its king's gift, and its weather: The published account gives the old church a chancel organ built by H. Erben with 1,527 pipes, and part of its statuary donated by King Louis Philippe of France. The same record's organ line gives the first Sacred Heart a small reed organ in the 1850s, replaced with Sorin's approval in 1865 by a hand-pumped organ of 1,500 pipes — the two accounts of the old church's music stand side by side, unmerged. In the spring of 1851 a wind blew the tower and its bell to the ground; that summer a larger bell of 3,220 pounds was bought in Cincinnati, blessed, and placed in one of the towers, and in 1852 a local carpenter built double spires on the church in exchange for his son's tuition. The old church also received the building's first French glass: two round stained-glass windows bought from the Carmel of Le Mans glassworks and a third, "The Divine Face," given to Sorin by the Carmelite nuns themselves — the Basilica's history page dates the works' windows for Notre Dame's first church to 1863. And in 1856 the old church received twenty-three bells cast at Le Mans, whose story belongs to the tower entry below. When the present church's first Mass was said in 1875, the Old Church's quarter-century as the campus's church ended; the present church is the second of its name on the campus, as the Notre Dame history in this record carries it.

Sources

1. University of Notre Dame, Campus Ministry — Self-Guided Tour of the Basilica (text by the Rev. Peter D. Rocca, C.S.C.): the mission line from Allouez and Badin to Sorin; the Old Church at ninety by thirty by twenty-four feet; the present church begun 1870.
2. The published history of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Notre Dame) — the Old Church's building course (25 May 1848; dedicated 12 November 1848; consecrated 11 November 1849 by Bishop de St. Palais), the Erben organ of 1,527 pipes, the Louis Philippe statuary, the 1851 wind and the Cincinnati bell, the 1852 spires, the reed organ and the 1,500-pipe organ of 1865, and the first church's Le Mans windows.
3. University of Notre Dame — the Basilica's history page (basilica.nd.edu): the Carmel du Mans glassworks provided windows for the first church in 1863.
4. University of Notre Dame — the 175th-anniversary timeline (175.nd.edu): the 1848 church as a substantial upgrade with a small organ and bell tower, the college church until 1870.
5. The Notre Dame history in this record — the present church as the second of its name on the campus.