John Mary Joseph Chanche was born on October 4, 1795 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. He was the son of John Chanche, a merchant and, it was said, a man of considerable wealth, who, fleeing from the negro disturbances in San Domingo, came to Baltimore with his wife Catherine Provost.
He entered St. Mary's College at the age of eleven.
He joined the Sulpician community which conducted it, receiving Holy Orders at Baltimore, June 5, 1819. Following some years of teaching he was made vice-president and, in 1834, president of his alma mater. After twice refusing nomination as bishop-coadjutor of eastern sees, he accepted appointment to the newly-erected diocese of Natchez. Soon after his consecration at Baltimore by Archbishop Eccleston, March 14, 1841, he set out for the South. Though the church in Mississippi was then over a century old and had received the support of the Spanish government probably until 1791, its state was such that Bishop Chanche virtually had to found it anew. The land and buildings in Natchez with which Spain had provided the mission had been lost when the American government took possession of the region, probably because title to them had been vested in the Spanish government. No claim was entered until Bishop Chanche came in May 1841. The search for evidence of ecclesiastical right to these properties led the bishop to Cuba in 1844 and to other parts of Spanish America. He presented the evidence which he discovered to Congress and petitioned that the church be indemnified in money or in lands of equal extent or value with those originally granted. His petition was never returned. Bishop Chanche was, however, too practical a man to wait the issue of this claim. He drew immediately on funds which the Association for the Propagation of the Faith had prior to his coming annually deposited with the bishop of New Orleans for the support of the Natchez mission. He solicited contributions from European missionary societies. He pressed the congregation which had led a precarious existence at Natchez during the American period. His determination to succeed was plainly stated in his first address to it the day after his arrival. "If I meet encouragement I will stay with you; if not I seek a home elsewhere. I am not bound to Natchez, but to the state of Mississippi. " The corner-stone of the edifice was laid on February 28, 1842, and it was dedicated on Christmas Day. At this time however Bishop Chanche had but two priests and a hundred communicants. The Catholic population was thinly distributed over about fifty thousand square miles of territory. When he died he had eleven priests, and he had laid the foundations of an educational system that would indirectly develop vocations. In 1848 he had introduced Sisters of Charity from Emmitsburg, and they promptly opened a school and presently an orphan asylum in Natchez. In the state at large there were on his death eleven churches and seventeen attendant missions, and missionary activity among the negroes also was well under way. Returning to Natchez from the First Plenary Council of Baltimore, of which he had been an earnest promoter, Bishop Chanche fell ill of cholera morbus, and died at Frederick City, July 22, 1852.
His was a tall and commanding figure, graceful and dignified of carriage, and an attractive and winning personality, urbane and cultivated of manner.
