Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli (born Carlo Gaetano Samuele Mazzuchelli) was born on November 4, 1806, in Milan, Italy. He was the son of Luigi Mazzuchelli and Rachele Merlini. The father was a member of an affluent family of bankers long prominent in the financial circles of the Lombard capital.
Samuel Mazzuchelli educated first by tutors at Milan, Samuel then studied at Faenza and at Rome, and in the former city became a novice of the Dominican order in 1823.
Samuel Mazzuchelli left for the American missions in 1828, going first to Bardstown, Kentucky, and then to Ohio, where on September 5, 1830, he was ordained to the priesthood in the Cincinnati Cathedral by the Dominican bishop, Edward Fenwick. Samuel Mazzuchelli departed immediately for the island of Mackinac to commence his missionary endeavors, but three years later made Green Bay his headquarters. From these points, he made frequent visits to Arbre Croche, St. Ignace, Sault Sainte Marie, and Fort Winnebago, and also labored a short while in Detroit. He worked among the French Canadians and half-breeds, but principally among the Indians the Menominee, Ottawa, Chippewa, and Winnebago. Samuel Mazzuchelli mastered their languages with facility; numerous conversions crowned his efforts; and in 1833 he printed a prayer book and catechism in the difficult Winnebago tongue.
Early in 1835 Samuel Mazzuchelli crossed the snows on his second journey to Prairie du Chien and commenced the first church for that entire area. He then visited the fast-growing villages of Galena and Dubuque and hastened down the valley to St. Louis to make a report of his missions. That same spring, by steamboat, coach, horseback, and foot he traveled seven hundred miles to visit his Dominican superiors in Ohio, and thirteen hundred more to return to Galena and Dubuque. Here he found himself for several years the only priest among Indians and whites for a distance of hundreds of miles in some directions and thousands of miles in others.
When Dubuque has created a diocese in 1837, Samuel Mazzuchelli was the sole representative of Bishop Loras until the latter's arrival and then for several years acted as his vicar-general and missioner extraordinary. Among his daring excursions was a visit in February 1843 to Nauvoo, where he interviewed Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader, and attempted to convert him. In that year Samuel Mazzuchelli participated in the Fifth Provincial Council of Baltimore, acting as the theologian of Bishop Loras. He visited his native land, finished his Memoirs, written in Italian, and had them printed in Milan in 1844.
Returning to America, Samuel Mazzuchelli commenced in 1845 the erection of Sinsinawa Mound College for the education of young men, at Sinsinawa, Wis. Of this institution he was the first president and chief teacher. Later Samuel Mazzuchelli confided its direction to his fellow Dominicans from Ohio, while he devoted himself, after 1847, to the founding of a congregation of teaching sisters, the Dominican Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary.
Samuel Mazzuchelli was the architect of the county courthouse at Galena; he built the bishop's residence in Dubuque, and he designed the first capitol of Iowa at Iowa City. While acting as pastor of the church at Benton, as chaplain of the sisterhood, and as director of the Benton Academy which he had founded.
Quotations: "My little share of the work was the word to say, and the superior call of my companion was the Spirit to administer."
Samuel Mazzuchelli had no family.
