This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: PREISSER, FRANK Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/kFB.2ACE/4158 Message Board Post: The Roman Catholic church in Grand Rapids is represented by many able clergyman of such power and lives as would bring honor to any community in which they might live, men of such lovable natures as win the affections as well as the respect of those under their charge, and are consequently the better enabled to move their people along the path whose watchword is religion and whose lights are faith and morals. Of the Catholic priests of the diocese of Grand Rapids there is none of higher personal consideration among the members of his own faith, as well as those of a different religious opinion than the Rev. Jerome Preisser, pastor of St. Anthony's Church. Father Preisser was born at Albany, N.Y., April 27, 1865, a son of Joseph and Mary (Frank) Preisser. His parents were natives of Germany, his father born in Bavaria and his mother in Baden, and they came to the United States when young and married in Albany, N.Y., where Joseph Preisser was engaged in working as an employee ! of the New York Central Railway. Both parents are deceased. Rev. Jerome Preisser attended the parochial and public schools of Albany in his boyhood, and when his early training was completed enrolled as a student at St. Francis' College, at Syracuse, N.Y. Later he went to Rome, Italy, where his theological studies were prosecuted for four years, and April 12, 1891, he was ordained as a priest of the Catholic Church. His first charge upon his return to this country was at Hoboken, N.J., where he was assistant at St. Joseph's church for one year, spent the next two years as assistant at the Church of the Assumption, Syracuse, N.Y., and then went to Louisville, Ky., where he remained for eighteen years as pastor of St. Peter's Church. On Aug. 6, 1912, he was called to St. Anthony's Parish, Grand Rapids. Under Father Preisser's spiritual direction are 200 families, while there are 145 children in the parochial school, taught by four teachers from the Dominican Sisters. The new c! hurch, the basement of which is now finished, was dedicated March 7, 1915, and when completed will be a monument to Father Preisser's artistic habits and successful energy. In the prime of his life, a man of active habits and never-failing industry, Father Preisser essays nothing for his parish in which he does not succeed. Neither is there any priest in Grand Rapids who has more thoroughly succeeded in endearing himself to his parishioners.