Charles Felix Van Quickenborne

Background

Van Quickenborne was born on January 21, 1788, at Peteghem in East Flanders.

Education

In Peteghem, Charles received his preliminary education. Later, he attended a school at Denyze and the seminary at Ghent.

Career

After ordination as a Catholic priest in 1812, Van Quickenborne taught in a preparatory seminary at Roulers and held a curacy at St. Genoix, near Courtrai. The negotiations between the United States and Great Britain which led to the Treaty of Ghent aroused interest in the former country, and among those who were attracted to the American mission field was Van Quickenborne. On April 14, 1815, he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Rumbeke, and two years later, he was assigned to the Maryland mission of the Society of Jesus.

After his arrival in the United States, he taught the Scriptures at Georgetown College, conducted religious services in Alexandria, Virginia, and served as master of novices at Whitemarsh, where he built a stone chapel. He also attended the Catholic congregation at Annapolis, in which place, with the financial aid of the Carrolls, he erected a brick chapel. His religious and charitable services among the poor, and especially among the neglected Negroes, challenged such attention that Archbishop Ambrose Marechal described him as a saint.

An enthusiastic priest of unbounded zeal and dynamic energy, he was named, in 1823, superior to conduct a Jesuit band of priests, novices, and lay brothers to Missouri. In a log cabin at Florissant, Van Quickenborne as superior of the Jesuits and as the bishop's vicar general of Upper Louisiana founded the Missouri province of his Society. Soon a church, St. Regis Seminary for Indian boys, a school for Indian girls under the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, and a school at St. Charles gave evidence of his successful labors. In 1828, he established St. Louis College, which in 1832 was incorporated as St. Louis University.

A born missionary, as early as 1827, he journeyed into the Osage Indian country, and later visited the Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and other western tribes. In 1836, the first Jesuit mission with a resident priest was founded among the Kickapoo tribesmen, and soon after St. Mary's Mission was established among the Potawatomi Indians near what is now Leavenworth. In the meantime, he undertook a series of missionary excursions through Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa, becoming the pioneer of the Catholic faith in Edwardsville, Galena, and Springfield, Illinois, and in Keokuk and Dubuque, Iowa. On these excursions, he not only preached to the Indians but ministered to the scattered Catholic settlers and laborers in the lead mines.

In 1835, and in the year following, he was on the site of future Kansas City, performing the first recorded baptisms and marriages in that region. He also rendered no small service to the missions of the West by training such Jesuits as Christian Hoecken, Pierre De Smet, and Peter Verhaegen. In order to finance his work and to popularize Jesuit enterprises he gave lectures and collected money in the East. Accounts of the missions which he wrote to his superiors were published in the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi from 1826 to 1836. Worn out by his strenuous labors, Van Quickenborne died before he was fifty, while stationed in the missionary parish of Portage des Sioux.

Achievements

• Van Quickenborne is best known as the founder of St. Louis University.

Connections

There is no information about his personal life. Perhaps he was never married.

References

• History of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Vol. 2: In Its Various Stages of Development From A. D. 1673 to A. D. 1928; Containing Part Three (Classic Reprint)
• Catholic Beginnings in Kansas City, Missouri: An Historical Sketch