In a recent post, I took a look at some of the present monastic institutions operating in the State of Oregon. Driving on the busy Farmington Road – Oregon Highway 10 – takes you past the looming structure of the motherhouse for the congregation of the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon. Like other Catholic stories here in Oregon, theirs begins in Germany – or at the time, Switzerland and the Hapsburg-dominated Duchy of Baden, both a long way from their eventual home in the rural Marion County hamlet of Jordan.
Sequoias line the entry road on the west side of the large grass field – the lawn brings memories of a Tualatin Valley losing more and more of its agricultural heritage every year. The Order today boasts on its ground’s schools ranging from preschool through high school, a care home for the elderly along with a memory care center. Everything has a beginning. The story underlying the Sisters is both unique and fascinating.
FRANCES DE SALES BRUNNER
In the 1830-1840s the main bulk of immigrants to the United State were German. Those numbers increased dramatically after the revolutions of 1848-1849. A large number of these immigrants ended up in Ohio. The bishop of Cincinnati, John Baptist Purcell wrote Reverend Frances de Sales Brunner inviting him to bring missionaries to Ohio to help minister to the new German flocks.
Brunner is another Swiss by birth. He spent his initial years as a priest in the Benedictine Mariastern Abbey, the second most important place of pilgrimage in Switzerland. After a nine-year stint, Brunner took on Trappist vows in 1829. Only a year later, as a member of the Oelenberg Abbey in Alsace, he was forced to flee along with the other Trappist due to the 1830 French Revolution.
the castle and the confraternity
After spending the next couple years in Graubünden – he bought the Löwenberg Castle next to the hamlet of Schulein using it as a school for poor boys. Then he made a pilgrimage to Rome with his mother in 1833 where both enrolled in the Archconfraternity of the Most Precious Blood. During the next decade, he entered into the Congregation of the Most Precious Blood while continuing his work educating boys, but now with an eye to educate them for the priesthood.
His mother also gathered young women at Löwenberg setting up a perpetual adoration devotion – continuous Eucharistic devotion where the various members of a parish take turns adoring in silence the Blessed Sacrament without interruption twenty-four hours a day – and concentrate upon educating orphans. Her group became the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood.
Brunner found his work interfered with by government in the meantime. Remembering Bishop Purcell’s request, he accepted in 1843 and set out with seven other brothers, priests and candidates to establish a new community in Ohio. Near Norwalk, Ohio he established a series of missions. Now, the superior of the American province of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood more followed. As did the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood the following summer of 1844. One of the early missions set up near St. Henry not far from the Indiana border called Himmelgarten.
JOSEPH ALBRECHT
Joseph Albrecht became the mayor of his home village in the Briesgau area of Baden, Germany which until Napoleon’s invasion of 1805 was under Hapsburg control. He married a local girl, Anna Marie. Eventually, they amicably separated in 1835 with Anna entering into the Löwenberg convent to become Sister Mary Ann. She left for America in 1844 with two other sisters. One was her daughter Rose. They were the first Sisters of the Precious Blood to join Father Brunner in Ohio.
Joseph and Brunner had been good friends and would remain so. When Mary Ann returned to Europe to gain more recruits for Ohio in 1847, Joseph Albrecht decided it was time for him to join the order in America. Two years later, at the age of 49, he became ordained.
Maria Anna became the Mother Superior for three different convents back in Ohio. She would die in 1864. Their daughter Rose died of tuberculosis just months before Joseph and Maria Anna returned to Ohio in 1848.
a new priest
Joseph Albrecht also had money from his previous life. Now, a popular misconception is that all priests take vows of poverty, but that is not true. Vows of poverty remain something which religious order priests do. Diocesan priests’ only vow is to obey their bishop. The Congregation of the Most Precious Blood is not an official religious order. It falls under the category of a society of apostolic life, group of men or women within the Catholic Church who have come together for a specific purpose and live fraternally. In this manner, Father Brunner could purchase his castle. So, also, Joseph Albrecht – who had also managed Father Brunner’s finances for him – came into the congregation with funds which would enable him to a certain degree of independence.
Albrecht served his first years as an assistant to mission pastors. As a man of more maturity than most other priests and someone who used to have authority, he did not serve as an ideal underling. Despite the complaints of some, Father Brunner made him pastor of the new parish of St. Joseph in 1854 on the western border of Ohio near the village of St. Henry.
st. Joseph’s and himmelgarten
The log house convent at Himmelgarten, Mother of Mercy Convent, burnt in the same year. With his own money, Albrecht replaced the log building with a larger brick convent. Joseph had a strong personality and appealed to his parishioners. Some came to see him as a saint in the making. Father Brunner also though of his friend as the model of a Christian minister. Others disagreed.
Father Brunner was in Europe dealing with another of his abbeys in Schellenberg lying in the northernmost reaches of the small principality of Liechtenstein. Here, he died in late 1859. Replacing Brunner was Father Andrew Kunkler as the superior of the American province of the Most Precious Blood.
HOOP SKIRTS
Father Albrecht was a conservative, especially when it came to what he considered vanity. Hoop skirts were a fashion finally reaching Ohio just after the Civil War. The father was not a fan. He forbade women attending St. Joseph’s Church – 1866 – to wear them. Challenge accepted by some young women. The father, thoroughly enraged, picked up a hickory stick and pushed the girls out the door. The matter went up to Archbishop Purcell in Cincinnati. Purcell saw no harm in the skirts, a decision Father Albrecht refused to accept. Purcell then suspended Albrecht, something not pleasing Father Joseph or his congregation.
Father Joseph next gathered up his followers, including eight brothers and fifteen sisters of the Precious Blood congregation. They stopped first at a farm a few miles west of St. Joseph where he wrote a letter of apology to the archbishop asking at the same time for a transfer and permission to move to another diocese.
But before receiving a reply, everyone got on a train heading west. They spent the winter in St. Nazianz, Wisconsin, another German religious colony organized in 1854 by Father Ambrose Oschwald. Oschwald’s party came out of the Black Forest of Germany seeking religious freedom in the years after the German Revolutions. Oschwald and Albrecht were old friends. The community in Wisconsin was communal by nature with everything shared by members, a relationship continuing until 1896. This relationship, theocracy in practice, was something Father Albrecht admired and hoped to emulate.
More on Father Oschwald and St. Nazianz to come.
RUSH LAKE
Minnesota was the goal for the disenfranchised Father Albrecht. He sent men out earlier to find and purchase land where his little colony could take root, far away from hoop skirts and authoritative bishops. With the land found on the north side of Rush Lake near the inlet of the Otter Tail River, the father planned the trip for the women and children to travel the following spring. First by wagon from St. Nazianz eighteen miles to Manitowoc lying on the shore of Lake Michigan. Next, train and boat to St. Cloud on the Mississippi. From here, again, they gathered into wagons following the Crow Wing trail into Otter Tail County not far east of what would become Fargo, North Dakota.
After eight days, they reached the shores of Rush Lake where Bruno Boedigheimer and his sons waited to ferry the women and children across to their new home. The oxen swam across with the wagons floating behind them. The men already had homes for the five families who followed Father Albrecht and a convent erected for the Sisters as well. Located on the west side of the present-day St. Lawrence Catholic Church is a bronze plaque commemorating the arrival of Father Albrecht in 1866 in an oxcart with three Brothers.
A NEW COMMUNITY
The families settled on land close to the church which they built near the Otter Tail River to which the convent adjoined at the rear. Cabins eventually became replaced by more substantial homes and barns ready to endure the cold winters. Produce was sold at the rail stop which developed to the north in the town of Perham giving access to markets in St. Cloud and the Twin Cities.
Within the church, the Sisters assisted at mass and performed the hours of perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament required by the rule of the Precious Blood order. Outside, Father Albrecht organized the convent to be self-supporting with pasture lands and fields for grain, potatoes and large gardens. There was a pigsty, big barn, blacksmith shop – which also provided room for a school for the children – and a smoke house for meats.
PROBLEMS WITH AUTHORITY
At the head of the prospering community stood Father Joseph Albrecht. He still had not put himself under the authority of a bishop. Years passed, the father’s purpose for moving to the far west was to establish themselves away from authority. Father Francis Pierz was a Catholic missionary at the nearby Crow Wing Indian Reservation. He became aware of the Albrecht’s situation, and he urged him to seek reconciliation with the Minnesota bishop, Thomas Grace. Albrecht decided to take Pierz’s advice and trudged to St. Paul, 200 miles away, on foot in the fall of 1866. Grace was not at home when he arrived, and Albrecht thought Grace tried to avoid him on purpose. Not waiting for the bishop to show up, he returned to Rush Lake in a sour mood.
PRICE OF REPENTANCE
Pierz also wrote to Father Kunkler, head of the American province of the Most Precious Blood, asking for a pardon for the Rush Lake father. Kunkler had never really liked the older priest. He dismissed Albrecht when he left Ohio. However, he did give conditions for the recalcitrant priest to gain reinstatement. Father Albrecht would write a letter to be read in St. Joseph’s and neighboring parishes retracting words and actions he had taken and could not get seek to receive compensation from the congregations for his financial outlays. The Sisters he had taken were to be sent back to Ohio and he was never to found another convent in the name of the Precious Blood again. These conditions were refused by the old German mayor.
Bishop Grace, also refused to grant Albrecht the functions of a priest, but that did not daunt Father Albrecht. In fact, he preached outside his parish boundaries and successfully drew in more people. He was very convincing to the point many began believing him to be a saint with minor miracles ascribed to his efforts. His preaching outside of Rush Lake drew a response from the bishop who sent other priests to denounce Father Albrecht. Tit for tat, Albrecht denounced the bishop from his pulpit and then on 23 November 1871 Grace responded by excommunicating Albrecht and his church.
FATHER ALBRECHT’S FINAL YEARS
The excommunication edict was not well known among the folk of Rush Lake. They had formed their own world by then anyway. Many believed Father Albrecht was an innocent victim of the hierarchy. His persecution came from his attempts to correct sins within the church. In banishing theater, dancing, gay merriment and issuing regulations regarding dress and diet, Albrecht’s congregation came to believe outsiders who did not follow the rule of Rush Lake rejected Christianity as per Peter and Paul of the early church. They also believed the end of the world was not far off and those of Rush Lake were in good stead for eternal salvation.
Father Albrecht retired more in the last twelve years of his life from his leadership role at Rush Lake. He did continue to accept young women into the convent. Then, in May 1879, a fire starting in the barn left the church and convent in desolate ruin. The instigator was believed by locals to have been from outside.
Later in the same month, Father Albrecht became ill and thought near the end of his life. Another priest of the Congregation of the Precious Blood showed up to get the recalcitrant father back on track before he faced the eternal consequences of his stubbornness towards authority. Just as he was about to repent and reconcile, he recanted thinking his community would perceive weakness on his part. Not only did Father Albrecht recover, but he managed the rebuilding of the church and other buildings destroyed in the fire.
DEATH OF A SAINT
At the end of Lent in 1884, Father Albrecht did die, two weeks short of his 84th birthday. He had earlier named three local men to become trustees for the community and convent – Anton Bender, Victor Eifert and Christopher Silernagel. These men took over the governing and fiscal responsibility for the group. They buried the father under the sanctuary in front of the altar in the new church.
Rush Lake fell into the new diocese of St. Cloud currently. The bishop sent out his vicar general – main deputy – to recover the Sisters and their convent. The deputy came to Rush Lake but could not interview the Sisters because the trustees did not allow it. In face of the controversary regarding who owned what – the lands for the community including the convent had been in Father Albrecht’s name – also split the community.
Victor Eifert, Anton Bender and his son John journeyed further west to Oregon to find a bishop who would let them choose their own priest while continuing to manage their community. Meeting with the administrator of the archepiscopal see of Oregon City – the present archbishop had recently resigned – they were told Oregon had plenty of room for them to live and work. The Sisters would have an abundance of opportunities to work from a new convent. Plus, there was a new Benedictine monastery not far away – Mount Angel – from where a priest could be obtained.
MOVE TO OREGON
With the positive report, moves were made by the trustees to move the community once again. As they sold off properties and goods, they did not want to take with them, the trustees also recovered Father Albrecht’s body. This move was done secretly, for those moving west did not want those who elected to remain to know. They tunneled into the church from the convent which backed up against the rear wall of the sanctuary. Recovering the coffin, they filled in the soil behind them making everything undisturbed.
beholding a saint
Opening the coffin, they discovered the body to be little changed – incorrupt. The few who viewed him interpreted the body condition as a sign that Father Albrecht was indeed a saint. Quick aside, “incorruptible” is a condition shared with his friend Father Oschwald back in Wisconsin.
The body was washed and dressed in a new cassock. Placed in a new coffin, the body was placed in a large packing case and stowed as furniture. To further the impression that nothing was amiss, those leaving left a wreath of flowers on the floor of the father’s former resting place with an inscription in memory of their old priest.
With the father’s body in tow, the trustees rented three rail cars for their move – one car for people, one car for livestock and one car for belongings. The trustees also persuaded the Sister’s leader to join them as they headed to Oregon. The train reached Portland on the last day of July 1884. Included in the party were three Sisters and fourteen sister-aspirants. After a short wait, they connected with the narrow-gauge train taking them to Salem and then further to Scio. While waiting, the Sisters met up with Father Dominic Faber who was assigned to the cathedral nearby. He was interested in their venture and promised he would visit them.
NEW HOME IN JORDAN
From Scio, wagons took all out east to the new home picked out for them above Thomas Creek in Jordan. Log cabins were again the house of choice. The Sisters shared their home with the coffin of Father Albrecht which rested in the upper attic above. The trustees hoped to build a proper outdoor shrine within which to place their saint. The first church-convent combination resembled the one left behind on the Otter Tail River in Minnesota.
Father Faber, true to his word, visited the Sisters at their new home. Protesting the powers that be in the new settlement rested with the trustees and that no move had gone forward to gain a priest, the trustees put the father back onto a wagon sending him back to the train station in Scio.
About this time, some of the young sister-aspirants became uneasy. One of the brothers, Joseph Boedigheimer – who had left Ohio in 1866, also was not happy. He ventured north to Mount Angel on foot, thirty-five miles, where the abbot, Adelhelm Odermatt, promised to send Reverend Werner Ruettimann to Jordan on a visit. Ruettimann successfully introduced himself and offered to perform mass and organize catechism classes for the young people who had grown up in Rush Lake without church-sanctioned teachings.
A NEW ARCHBISHOP
William H. Gross transferred from Savannah, Georgia to become the new archbishop of the See of Oregon City in February 1885. Reaching his new post in May he was informed of the situation in Jordan by Prior Adelhelm. Confirming the classes Ruettimann had been giving, he set a date to administer the confirmation to those students for the last day of July. Welcomed by the men of the colony when he got off the train in Scio, a happy procession met him a mile out from Jordan. The following morning, the Archbishop offered up mass and administered the sacrament of confirmation. He also decreed that deed to the church and its adjoining property be made out to the Archdiocese. Since the land was the private property of trustee Anton Bender, this was something not in the plans of the trustees.
To the right side of the church stood the shrine to Father Albrecht which the Archbishop noted. He told the community that until the Holy See investigated and decreed the man a saint, the shrine should be removed and the body buried into the ground. While the shrine was dismantled, another smaller one became erected in the new cemetery. Here a light burnt before the exposed remains of Father Albrecht. Eventually, around 1905, a fire started – some say it started from the kerosene vigil lamp – and the shrine and the remains of Father Albrecht burnt. The charred bones then returned to the earth at that time.
BREAKUP
Archbishop Gross informed the Sisters in the convent that they were not accepted by the church as religious. He needed teachers for the diocese, but they first needed a teacher to prepare them for a new life. Father Ruettimann was told to prepare the young women to take vows to become true Sisters. This did not set well with the trustees who declared the women were already religious made so by Father Albrecht. Twelve of the women were daughters of the men of the community. Father Ruettimann got the order to leave Jordan and not return.
Faced with the impasse, Archbishop Gross sent Prior Adelhelm with Father Ruettiman to Jordan to try and establish peace, but the trustees did not budge. The young women, realizing by continuing to stay in Jordan, their future within the Catholic church was over, they signed an agreement to form a religious congregation subject to the See of Oregon City and the Archbishop. At a public meeting, Prior Adelhelm read a note from the Archbishop asking which of the women wished to go forward and break connections with the trustees. Each Sister and aspirant rose in agreement. Several of the women were daughters of the trustees themselves.
OUT FROM JORDAN
The women stayed at the convent in Jordan for the time being which eventually stretched out to almost two years. With no mass offered in the meantime, the Sister Lucretia and eight of the young ladies finally moved to the village at the foot of Mount Angel – still known as Fillmore at the time.
Of the three older Sisters, Lydia Mahl had died in 1885 and lies in the Jordan Catholic Cemetery; Anna Mohr returned to her parents in Rush Lake; Afra Ruhl was too ill to travel to Mount Angel and stayed disconsolately behind in Jordan. She died a few weeks later and lies next to Sister Lydia.
Four of the aspirants returned to their families while one, Catherine Folz, left to follow the others, becoming Sister Mary Barbara of the Benedictine order. For many years, she managed the monastery kitchen at Mount Angel.
Upon his deathbed, Anton Bender – 1898 – submitted to the authority of the church while it took the death of his wife in 1899 for Christopher Silbernagel to do likewise.
SISTERS OF MARY OF OREGON
The women who went to Fillmore went on to other adventures and challenges. They went to Sublimity forming a convent they named Mariazell. In 1891, the women moved from Sublimity to the St. Mary’s Orphanage in Beaverton. From Beaverton, the congregation of women have endured until today supplying teachers to catholic schools in the region while running the orphanage. Their service work has expanded into care for the elderly.
Originally, the ladies re-founded their order as Sisters of the Most Precious Blood. They changed the name of their order in 1905 to Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon to reduce confusion with a new order – Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood – which had established a monastical convent in Portland in 1891. One of the aspirants who followed Father Albrecht west from Ohio, Theresa Arnold – later, Sister May Benedict – tried to transfer to their monastery but became informed of a substantial dowry required before she could join. Penniless, she had to decline. She lies today buried at the St. Boniface Cemetery in Sublimity.
mother mary
The Boedigheimer family also followed their daughter, Aurora, to Sublimity at the time when the young aspirants left Jordan. She took her vows in March 1887, becoming Sister Mary Cecilia of the Sisters of the Precious Blood. Three years later, she became the first Superior of the St. Mary’s Boy’s Home in Beaverton. She spent most of her life in charge of the Convent – Beaverton – Chapel training young Sisters and aspirants in the care of the sanctuary. Her father, Bruno, was a long follower of Father Albrecht from Ohio days played an instrumental role in the sisters leaving the trusteeship of Jordan. Bruno and his wife Maria raised eight children – all boys except for Aurora – and many of their family lives in and around Sublimity today. Two of his sons stayed in Minnesota.
JORDAN CATHOLIC PIONEER CEMETERY
There are a few cemeteries around the Jordan area today. The one next to Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church remains the best known.
Farther to the east of the today’s catholic church in Jordan is the Jordan Catholic Pioneer Cemetery. Here, Father Joseph Albrecht and two of his three trustees lie – Anton Bender and Christopher Silbernagel. (The third trustee, Victor Eifert lies buried with his wife in Yreka where they moved in the early 20th century). The cemetery holds many of those who came west from Minnesota and Ohio. One of the men served with the Union army during the Civil War. Christopher F. Pepperling served with the 46th Illinois as a volunteer where he suffered a bullet to the right jaw at Shiloh on 6 April 1862 but continued to serve until 1866 (Victor Eifert served with the 47th Ohio, after being drafted. He spent the last two years of the war with Sherman’s army.).
Benders and Silbernagels make up the majority of graves here, but the two Sisters who died in Jordan – Mary Eifert and Lydia Mahl – lie here. Most of the women who left the convent in Jordan lie buried in the Convent Cemetery at St. Mary’s of the Valley in Beaverton.
JORDAN’S STORY continues
The fascinating history of the small hamlet of Jordan does not finish with the Catholic pioneers of Ohio and Minnesota. Its story continued another two decades later, continued in a following post.
But before moving on, three books cover the story of this first gathering of Jordan: there is Journey of Hope by Bob Riepe focusing on the story of Father Albrecht. These Valiant Women; History of Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon written by Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J. covering the story of the Precious Blood movement from Europe through to present-day Oregon. Lastly, a first volume covering the 19th century history of the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon written by the former sister-historian of SSMO, Sister Pulcheria Sparkman, And So It Happened and Not By Chance can be found online.