You seemed to have overlooked in your brief historical survey, that Ohio was an area with a heavy concentration of people who adhered to the Reformed Church tradition, as well as Lutheran. W In a message dated 3/22/2013 8:24:15 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, gfb-ishida@gol.com writes: Alsace-Lorraine to Ohio. On Mar 22, 2013, at 11:59 PM, Audrey Shields Hancock wrote: > > > Here is a little more Canton history: > > "From 1796 to 1817 there were no priests in all Ohio. Prior to that, some > missionaries had travelled out of French Detroit as far east as Sandusky > [Ohio]. Church histories that mention early beginnings often do not explicate so one needs to dig further. The above probably was not particularly relevant to St. John's history. But missionaries who travelled in to Northwest Ohio mainly went out to convert the Indians and in one case to minister to the French Canadian soldiers at Fort Meigs. It was when immigrants from Europe began settlement that priests began to minister to these folk and new parishes were begun. Bishop Fenwick and Father Henni traveled of Cincinnati to do this. It was to Cincinnati where early Germans, Alsatian and Lorrainians came, thus it did have a large percentage of Catholic families. Bishop Fenwick established the seminary there. As I said that was where my ancestors were headed but stopped their journey near Norwalk. Others followed and it was through the determination of my gggg (?) aunt who had been educated by nuns and who may have been a nun herself, (debatable), and the Bauer (Phalsbourg) and Carabin (Lutzelbourg) families, who were closely related, that let to the formation of the Catholic parish in what still remains a rural area. It is said that "Schwester" Francesca Bauer, who was already in her 40s, had joined her family in immigrating, experienced religious persecution. This I have doubts about. The families, while common, did not seem to be particularly hard up, the family members were large in number and had money to get to the US and to buy extensive acreage. Another part of my paternal side, also came from Lorraine, Bening to Sandusky County, Ohio. Look at those long sentences - does it show my German heritage? Gloria "Genealogy. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own." Ambrose Bierce -- Resources for Alsace-Lorraine list members: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~valorie/Alsace-Lorraine-L.htm ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ALSACE-LORRAINE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message