Background
Verwyst was a native of the town of Uden, North Brabant, the Netherlands. His family was induced to emigrate to the United States by the representations of the Rev. Theodore J. Van den Broek, a Dominican missionary who had worked in the West with Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli. In 1848, after Van den Broek's visit, a considerable group removed from the Netherlands and formed a settlement in Brown County, Wis.
The Verwyst family, consisting of father, mother, and four sons, landed at Boston after a voyage of fifty-five days in a sailing vessel and remained there several years. By 1855, they had earned enough money to make the journey to Wisconsin and join their kinsmen in the settlement called "Franciscus Bosch, " where they bought sixty acres of land and built a log cabin. It took combined efforts of father and sons four years to clear thirty of the sixty acres.
Education
In 1859, Verwyst decided to enter the priesthood and began his studies with the local priest; the next year he was admitted to St. Francis Seminary, near Milwaukee, where he remained as a student five years.
Career
Verwyst was drafted for the Union army in 1863 and, though he was not a citizen, was obliged to buy his exemption. After this experience, he did not take out his citizen's papers for about fifteen years. Ordained on November 5, 1865, he was first stationed for three years in Waupaca County, with headquarters at New London; in 1868, he was transferred to Hudson, and officiated in Saint Croix and Pierce counties for four years; in 1872, he became resident priest for six years at Seneca, Crawford County, where he built a church and parsonage.
He was sent next to minister to the Indians and whatever white groups might be found in the Lake Superior region. After four years of a wandering ministry, he determined to enter the Franciscan order. Following his novitiate, when he took the name Chrysostom, he was sent in 1883 to Bayfield, Wisconsin, where a Franciscan monastery was established. There Verwyst spent the remainder of a long and useful life, except for a short sojourn in Missouri and California (1897 - 1900) for the improvement of his health, and a period of twelve years (1900 - 12) at Ashland, Wisconsin.
A specialist in the Chippewa language, in 1901, he published at Harbor Springs, Michigan, Chippewa Exercises: Being a Practical Introduction into the Study of the Chippewa Language. He also prepared two articles for the State Historical Society of Wisconsin: "Geographical Names in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan Having a Chippewa Origin" and "Historic Sites on Chequamegon Bay".
His study of the Missionary Labors of Fathers Marquette, Monard, and Allouez in the Lake Superior Region was published in Chicago in 1886 and his Life and Labors of Rt. Rev. Father Frederic Baraga at Milwaukee in 1900. He published for a time a monthly Chippewa magazine entitled Anishinabe Enamaid, and in 1907 put out Katolik gagikwemasinaigan mi sa Katolik enamiad gegikimind. In 1915, the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination was celebrated at Bayfield.
Personality
A stalwart figure, with soft brown eyes, and a scholar's habit, he was a man without guile, open and aboveboard, cheerful and gentle, beloved alike of white men and Indians.
