The mission era whole: from the river missions to the first resident congregation

1679–1837 · CONSOLIDATION FROM BEFORE-THE-CITY AND TRIBES, WITH THE CATHOLIC MISSION RECORD

This ground was governed religiously from elsewhere for a century and a half before it had a congregation of its own. The sequence, consolidated from this build's Before the City and Tribes legs and not retold at their depth, runs: La Salle's passage in December 1679; the French century administered from Fort St. Joseph (raised 1691, at present Niles) and its missions, and from the portage post where South Bend now stands; the valley trader line — LeClare from 1781, Burnett, Bertrand from 1808 at Parc aux Vaches, the nearest stand to this ground — none of it a post, mission or chapel on the townsite itself, a test Before the City runs first and returns negative. No priest, missionary or trader is recorded resident on this ground in the French or British centuries.

The one mission that touches this valley's people directly is dated, and its two printings stand unmerged. Leopold Pokagon's Catholic Potawatomi — the band that would later hold its ground by the mechanism told whole in Before the City — date their affiliation to 1830. Buechner's account has Fr. John Frederic Reze baptise Pokagon with twelve others in July 1830; the Pokagon scholarship has Fr. Stephen Badin arrive in August 1830 to raise the mission Pokagon had requested, with the baptism in 1833. Both printings are carried here whole, as the sister legs carry them; this section does not choose between them. That mission stood on the band's ground, not on the townsite: Silver Creek and the Dowagiac country are Michigan ground, and the mission era's local seat is there and at Carey Mission and Fort St. Joseph — boundary seats, named as such.

The era closes on a dated, resident fact on this ground. On 11 February 1837, in the farmhouse of Eli B. Mead in Penn Township, the First Baptist Church of Penn Township was constituted — the first congregation organised in the township and the first Baptist church in St. Joseph County (Chapman, 1880, pp. 798–802). The Rev. Price of Edwardsburg moderated; the charter roll of ten is printed in Churches & Religion and not repeated here. Between the river missions and that farmhouse meeting there is no resident congregation on this ground in any record reached: that interval — missionised from elsewhere, congregationally empty at home — is the mission era's true shape at boundary size, and it is the frame Churches & Religion's 1837 opening presupposes.

Sources:

1. 798–802).
2. The Pokagon baptism division (Reze, July 1830 / Badin, August 1830, baptism 1833) as printed whole in Before Osceola — carried unmerged.