Theodore J. Van den Broek
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Theodore J. Van den Broek (b. at Amsterdam, Holland, 5 November 1783; d. at Little Chute, Wisconsin, 5 November 1851) was a Dutch Dominican missionary to the United States.[1]
[edit] Life
He made his studies in Holland, was ordained in Germany in 1809, and was received into the Dominican Order in 1817. In 1819 he as appointed to Alkmaar, where he published "Sermons for all Sundays and Holidays".
On 15 August 1832, with seven other missionaries, he arrived in Baltimore, and thence went to Cincinnati. The missionaries were sent to different places, and Father Van den Broek eventually went to the convent of St. Rose in Kentucky. After a short stay at St. Rose he was removed to Somerset, Ohio.
Hearing of the condition of the Indians in Michigan (now Wisconsin), he obtained permission from Archbishop John Baptist Purcell of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati to go to them, and arrived at Green Bay, Wisconsin, 4 July 1834. He found there only ten Catholic families. He completed the church and priest's house begun by Father Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli, and devoted himself to the Indians during an epidemic of cholera, aided by two Sisters Clara and Theresa Bourdalou.
In 1836, at the request of the Indians of Little Chute, he took up his residence with them. He taught his Indian neophytes the alphabet, and to read Bishop Frederic Baraga's prayer-books and catechisms. The following year he built a log church thirty by twenty-two feet and in 1839 he built an addition thereto of twenty feet. As the mission at Green Bay was for some time without a resident priest, Father Van den Broek frequently said Mass on Sundays at each place, walking the intervening distance of twenty-two miles. He made journeys of two hundred miles, to minister to Menominee and Ho-Chunk Indians.
He had no income outside of his own resources; he built his first church himself, with the aid of Indians. He was both priest and physician at Butte des Morts, Fort Winnebago, Fond du Lac, Prairie du Chien, Lake Poygan, Calumet, and the Indian village on the Milwaukee River. He taught the use of tools and agriculture, and with Indian help he built a church seventy feet long, which he dedicated to St. John Nepomucene. Between 1836 and 1844 he converted and baptized over eight hundred Indians.
In 1847 having obtained a priest to temporarily replace him, he sailed for Europe, arriving at Amsterdam, 13 August 1847. In 1848 he returned with three shiploads of Dutch immigrants, who settled in north-eastern Wisconsin.[2]
[edit] Notes
This article incorporates text from the entry Theodore J. Van den Broek in the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
