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October 5, 1970
The following excerpt is from “A Century of Christianity on the Dakota Prairies” written by Fr. Albert Binder in 1970.
The first of the early settlers was Ulphi Cossette, erstwhile trapper and guide to missionaries in the Northwest territories of Canada, who had recently taken a wife and who now decided to settle down to a life of farming. Genin evidently had known him previously, and he mentions him in his letters to Bishop Tache. Ulphi built a home of logs in the Northeast quarter of Section 24 of Stanley township. A daughter was born to Ulphi March 21, 1870, whom he named Marie Flore. As far as is known, she is the first white child born in Cass County. Ulphi’s wife died a year and a half later, and probably is the first white person to be buried in Holy Cross Cemetery. A cross, erected by the 4th degree Knights of Columbus of Fargo in 1964 marks this cemetery, the oldest in Cass County, on which Father Genin had erected the first cross in 1871. After his wife’s death, Ulphi walked with his daughter to St. Boniface and left her in the care of the Grey Nuns there. The child later on became a sister, and in 1890 she pronounced her perpetual vows as a grey nun and took the name, Sr. Flore Martel. She was renowned for her voice, and taught music most of her life. She died December 23, 1951.
In 1870, Ulphi was joined by his brother, Pierre, and his half-brother, Delphis and by Pierre Toupin. The next year Joseph Sauvageau came and made claims for himself and his brother Charles who arrived with both his and Joseph’s families on All Saints Day, 1871. The log church noted on the survey stood on what became the land of Joseph Sauvageau.
Other pioneers continued to come from the diocese of Trois Rivieres, especially from the villages of Cap de la Madeleine, Champlain, and St. Maurice. Besides Cossette and Sauvageau (other branches of these families arrived in the late 1870’s), these are some of the names in the approximate order in which they came: Morin, Dorval, Hebert, Denis, DuBord, Richard, Trottier, Pronovost, Brunette, Fugere, Rheault, Tessier, Brunelle, Duval, Bellemare, Lajoie, Bernier, Montplaisir, Bailly.
The early members of Holy Cross Mission arrived by various means of transportation. Thus Joseph and Charles Sauvageau came by train to St. Cloud, Minnesota, thence by wagon and box-car to Breckenridge (that stretch of the railroad was under construction in 1871), and then north by wagon. Later, others were able to come by train to Glyndon, or to McCauleyville. Come they did, and by 1881, 52 names of church supporters appear on the parish lists.
During this first decade of parish history, priestly visits were sporadic. As mentioned, Father Simonet, an Oblate priest, came all the way from Pembina on parish visits. He was pastor of Pembina from 1870 to 1877. At that time the Oblates withdrew from the North Dakota Missions.
Father L. Spitzelberger came all the way from Berham, Minnesota, on a sick call in December of 1877. In April of 1878 he moved to Moorhead. Father Joseph Buh from Belle Prairie also visited St. Benedict’s. This Austrian native is one of the great pioneer priests of the area. He served at Belle Prairie from 1865 to 1879, and at Perham from 1879 to 1887.
Father Spitzelburger described the Holy Cross church as built of logs, about 20 x 30 feet. He wrote thus of a funeral he had, “February 18, 1878, I had a funeral of a married woman, French, died in giving birth to a child and was buried at the graveyard there. When we went from the church we had about one foot of water all over the prairie, and coming to the grave, the grave was filled of water, we had to throw the water first before we could bury the corpse and the coffin was perfectly buried in five feet of water. We had to stand in snow water, and many people did not leave the wagons or sleighs.”
For half a year in late 1878 and early 1879 the parish had a resident priest, Father Frund. Father Charles Richard, first pastor of Fargo, also took care of Holy Cross in 1880. The oldest entry in the extant parish records is by Father Richard—the burial of Gustave Rheault on August 20, 1880. Finally, in September of 1881, Father A. F. Bernier was appointed resident priest, and from then on, except for occasional short periods of time, the parish has had a resident pastor.
Life was hard. These French settlers were poor and helped support themselves by cutting wood along the river and supplying it to Fargo residents. A 1932 Fargo Forum article based on an interview with Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph Sauvageau speaks of Mrs. Sauvageau’s first home on the prairie: “a 12 x 14 frame shack with a lean-to kitchen. For the first two or three years they (her husband’s family) subsisted on fish and game and a bit of flour toted from Fort Abercrombie. The two years of 1871 and 1872 witnessed two terrible prairie fires, but they fought back the flames with backfire and wide plowing and were not burned out.”
Mrs. Oliva Rivard (nee Georgiana Denis) in a Forum interview published March 24, 1957, tells of her husband building a log house, her first. “He cut trees from stands along the river 2 miles away, and they put up the cabin.” Mrs. Rivard said she filled in the cracks with buffalo manure they gathered on the prairie and mixed with water and used as a plaster to make the structure wind-tight. “I made our own bed”, Mrs. Rivard remembered. “I took pieces of wood and fastened it together and I got hay from the prairie and put it over the wood. That was our first mattress.”.