GNB
Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

1,109 records available in this database
IntroductionIntroduction | Name IndexName Index | Occupation IndexOccupation Index | Organization IndexOrganization Index | Full-Text SearchFull-Text Search | The DictionaryThe Dictionary

LanguageLanguage
Page 363 of 1109

jump to page
FRENCH, CHARLES DANIEL (1773-1851)

FRENCH, CHARLES DANIEL, Catholic missionary, Miramichi, 1813-16; b. County Galway, Ireland, c1773; ordained 1799; d. Andover, Mass., 5 Jan 1851.

It has been stated that Charles French was raised in the Church of England and converted to Catholicism as a young man. After being trained for the priesthood in Europe he returned to Ireland to teach in a Dominican college. In 1812 he departed for Quebec to serve as a missionary under Bishop Joseph-Octave Plessis. When the bishop visited New Brunswick that summer he promised to assign an English-speaking priest to the Miramichi district, and a few months later he appointed French as missionary on both the Miramichi and St John rivers.

During his term as missionary French attended to the spiritual needs of the Catholics at Bartibog, Nelson, and elsewhere, as evidenced by his entries in the Bartibog church register. However, his services were in much demand in the south of the province as well, and he was often absent. By the summer of 1816 his place on the Miramichi had been taken by Father Joseph-Édouard Morisset, who filled in until August 1817. Then the Miramichi missions became part of the field served by Father Thomas Cooke from his base at Caraquet.

French was later identified with the church in Saint John, where he was very popular with the parishioners and citizenry alike. However, for reasons which remain obscure, he lost favor with Bishop Plessis, and when a vacancy for a parish priest occurred in Saint John in 1824, the bishop declined a request that he be appointed to fill it. In 1827 he was recruited by Bishop Benedict J. Fenwick of Boston, and during most of the rest of his life he labored as a missionary in New England. He was the first resident priest of a number of towns in Maine and Massachusetts and played an important part in building churches and organizing parishes.

Sources

[d] French biog. data / Broderick; Daigle; Hynes


4.11.1