Zephyrin Engelhardt was a German-born Roman Catholic priest and clerical historian of the Franciscan Order.
Background
He was born in Bilshausen near Hildersheim, Hanover, to Anthony Engelhardt, a second lieutenant in the armed forces and a mechanic in willow-ware, and his wife Elisabeth.
His parents emigrated to New York, arriving on December 8, 1852. Journeying westward by way of Buffalo, they settled permanently in Covington, Kentucky, where they reared five children.
Education
Charles Anthony, as Father Zephyrin was baptized, attended the St. Francis Assisi school in Cincinnati until 1864 when he found work at his father's trade in Baltimore.
On his return to Covington in 1867, he studied Latin in expectation of entering the priesthood and, on the death of his father in 1869, operated with the aid of his sisters a shop dealing in willow-work and toys.
At the same time, as a day student, he walked to and from St. Francis Seraphic College in Cincinnati for three years.
On September 22, 1872, he received the Franciscan habit and the name of Zephyrin at the novitiate in Teutopolis, from which he was transferred to the Franciscan monastery and college at Quincy, Ill. , where he mastered his classical and philosophical studies.
Career
Thereupon he followed the theological course at St. Anthony's Monastery, St. Louis, and was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Patrick J. Ryan, June 18, 1878.
Assigned as a teacher at St. Joseph's College, Cleveland, in 1879, he soon volunteered for the Menominee Indian mission at Keshena, Wisconsin, where in due time he learned to preach in the Indian idiom.
He published the first prayer and instruction book (1882) as well as a catechism (1883) in the Menominee tongue, and built a large Indian boarding-school.
In 1885 he was transferred to the Franciscan convent at Superior, Wisconsin, where he purchased the site of the present cathedral and organized a congregation. Through his assistance and that of Mother Agatha of the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Louis, an Indian school was established at the Fort Yuma reservation.
In 1887 he was vice-commissary of the Holy Land in Palestine with an office in New York, where he edited the weekly Pilgrim of Palestine and Messenger of St. Francis. A year later he was ordered to take charge of the St. Turibius Indian Mission in Lake County, California, from which he was transferred to the monastery at Cleveland in 1892.
Two years later he was named superior of the Indian missions in Michigan with Harbor Springs as a seat.
Here he familiarized himself with the Chippewa-Ottawa language, set up a printing press in the Indian school, edited a monthly paper, Anishinabe Enamiad (1896 - 1900) in Chippewa, and published a short Life of Catherine Tegakokwita, apparently in the interest of this saintly Mohawk's beatification, and authoritative volumes on The Franciscans in California (1897) and The Franciscans in Arizona (1899).
In 1899 he was sent to New Mexico to gather materials for a study of its Franciscan missions.
Commanded to take charge of the Indian school at Banning, California, he found the altitude ruinous to his health and was permitted to settle in Santa Barbara (1900), where he lived the remainder of his life with his manuscripts and books, except for five years on an assignment at an orphan asylum near Watsonville.
As a result of his scholarly researches throughout the Southwest, Mexico, and Spain, he wrote or compiled a steady flow of historical and apologetic volumes on the Southwestern missions: The Missions and Missionaries of California (1908 - 16), in five volumes, The Holy Man of Santa Clara; or, Life, Virtues and Miracles of Fr. Magin Catal (1909), and, between 1920 and 1933, separate studies of California missions. Accounts of the missions of Florida, Texas, and New Mexico he published serially for several years in the Franciscan Herald of Chicago.
His obsequies were simple, with Archbishop Edward J. Hanna pronouncing the eulogy, and his remains were interred in the old Indian cemetery where many famous Franciscan padres lie buried.
Religion
He contributed several sketches of missionaries to the Catholic Encyclopedia, and under the pen names of Der Bergmann and Esperanza, he wrote extensively for Catholic magazines.
Views
Quotations:
In a last feeble whisper, he asked, "How is the work coming on?"