Following Father Chiniquy

In the late 1850s and early 1860s, the attention of the Catholic and Protes­tant religious communities around the world focused on a few small settle­ments of French-Canadian immigrants in north-central Illinois. Soon after arriv­ing in their new home, a large number of these immigrants, led by Father Charles Chiniquy, the charismatic Catholic priest who had brought them there, converted to Protestantism. In this anthropological history, Caroline B. Bretell explores how Father Chiniquy took on both the sacred and secular authority of the Catholic Church to engineer the religious schism and how the legacy of this rift affected the lives of the immigrants and their descendants for generations.Brettell chronicles how Chiniquy came to lead approximately one thousand French-Ca­nadian families to St. Anne, Illinois in the early 1850s and how his conflict with the Catholic hierarchy led to his excommuni­cation. This intriguing study of a relatively unknown example of nineteenth-century migration of French-Canadians to the American Midwest offers an innovative perspective on the immigrant experience in America.

"Full of insights and wonderful detail, this well-written book tells a fascinating story of an often forgotten figure in American immigration history. By focusing on the French Canadian religious leader Charles Chiniquy in the mid-nineteenth-century Midwest and using impressive skills in anthropology and history, Brettell brings fresh perspectives to the study of French Canadian migration as well as the analysis of broader theoretical issues of social conflict, identity formation, and charismatic leadership."--Nancy Foner, coauthor of Strangers No More: Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in North America and Western Europe "With an extensive bibliography, endnotes, and a lengthy index, Brettell has made a worthwhile contribution to the ethnology of religious schism and its aftermaths and to the literature of Franco-American religion. I recommend the book to university libraries with a strong programme in North American religious history and immigration."--Paul Laverdure "The first half of Brettell's study provides a fine-grained anatomy of the initial French Canadian migration to Illinois's Kankakee Valley, an understudied facet of immigration history, especially when compared to the more widely researched French Canadian immigrants in New England. The author also explores Chiniquy's pre-migration and post-migration career as both a Catholic priest and a Presbyterian minister, devoting ample space to analyses of Chiniquy's interactions, both positive and negative, with fellow immigrants and with allied and opposing religious leaders."--William S. Cossen, The Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology

Caroline B. Brettell is Ruth Collins Altshuler Professor of Anthropology and director of the Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute at Southern Meth­odist University, USA. She is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of fourteen books, the most recent of which is Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of In­dian and Vietnamese Immigrants.