Building history with Father Mazzuchelli

By Anne Marie Amacher
The Catholic Messenger

DAVENPORT — Interior renovations to the original St. Anthony Church building began earlier this spring. Dominican Order of Preachers missionary Father Samuel Mazzuchelli built and founded the church in 1837.

Former parishioner Aaron Miers led a talk earlier this year about the priest, architect and builder of Catholic and civic buildings and the parish’s history. A member of St. Patrick Parish in Iowa City, Miers attends Mass at St. Anthony when in Davenport.  “I’m not a historian or expert,” he told listeners at his talk in the parish hall. He does research as “a hobby.”

Miers began with Antoine LeClaire’s role in establishing the city of Davenport and Catholic churches. As an interpreter at the end of the Black Hawk War in 1832, LeClaire helped negotiate the peace treaty signing between the Sauk and Meskwaki territories west of the Mississippi River, which the U.S. government purchased.

LeClaire and his wife, Marguerite, were gifted with land for helping to broker the treaty. LeClaire’s mother was part Native American and thus, he could speak dozens of dialects, Miers said. LeClaire also spoke French in addition to English. He built a home on the site of the treaty signing.

LeClaire and his friend, George Davenport, along with a group of other civic-minded citizens, drew up plans for the city of Davenport that included Church Square. The one person who would help with Church Square was Father Mazzuchelli. An Italian immigrant ordained to the priesthood in 1830 in Ohio, Father Mazzuchelli ministered in the Northwest Territory. In 1836, he celebrated Mass in LeClaire’s home.

Work on the new, 25-foot by 40-foot church began in 1837. Total population at the time in Davenport was 100 people, with 25 Catholics (in four families), Miers said. On Oct. 4, 1838, the district court held its first session in the church’s lower level, which also had a room for a residence for a priest. The upper level housed the church.

Bishop Mathias Loras of the Diocese of Dubuque dedicated the new church on May 23, 1839 as St. Peter and St. Anthony Church. Later that year, the church was deeded to Bishop Loras. From the beginning, people referred to the church as St. Anthony.

A statue that depicts Father Mazzuchelli, Davenport, LeClaire, Chief Black Hawk, Sister Mary Agatha Herley, BVM, and students from the parish’s first school stands on the parish grounds today, Miers said.

Father Mazzuchelli is credited with building 20 churches, establishing 40 parishes and having a role in civic buildings and courthouses. He also established the Dominican Sisters community in Sinsinawa, Wisconsin.

The original St. Mathias Church in Muscatine was constructed by Father Mazzuchelli in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin and floated down the Mississippi River to Muscatine where it still stands today as a chapel. Debate has swirled for years about the Old Capitol in Iowa City. Did the priest design it?

Miers said there are definitely influences of Father Mazzuchelli in the building, such as the self-supported, curved staircase. However, the building’s design is credited to John Francis Rague.

Father Mazzuchelli died in 1864 of pneumonia. One-hundred years later, the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin started the process to seek the priest’s canonization. On July 6, 1993, St. John Paul II declared Father Mazzuchelli venerable. The canonization process has not yet moved beyond that first step, Miers said. “What can we do?” Miers asked. “Pray.” His audience prayed for beatification of Father Samuel Mazzuchelli.