Lamy of Santa Fe (83 page)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

Acknowledgements

I
T IS A WELCOME
duty to acknowledge my indebtedness to many persons who over the years have generously helped me in the preparatory tasks for this book.

The late Most Reverend Edwin Vincent Byrne, D.D., eighth archbishop of Santa Fe, hoped that a biography of his first predecessor would be written. When I came to him with my plans, he gave me his friendship and confidence, along with vital help in the form of credentials which assured my access to many invaluable archives in the United States and above all those at the Vatican.

In Rome, his accreditation led me to the Very Reverend Fr Frederick Heinzmann, M.M., Procurator General of Maryknoll, and rector of Maryknoll House. In the face of what seemed my impossible request for all existing papers in Lamy's Vatican correspondence, Father Heinzmann brought my appeal before Peter Gregory Cardinal Agagianian, the late Pro-Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda Fide. With extraordinary dispatch, as astonishing to his staff as to me, His Eminence, receiving me one Monday morning in 1959 immediately upon his return from an audience with Pope John XXIII, granted me full access to any archives of the Propaganda Fide which bore upon Lamy. Cardinal Agagianian put me into the hands of Fr Peter Kowalski, S.J., head of the archives, who in turn gave me into the care of Mr Anton Debevec, a most able archival scholar. Mr Debeveč supplied me with hundreds of Lamy papers never before consulted for public use. My debt to all these Roman personages is incalculable.

So, too, is my debt to the Most Reverend Lawrence J. FitzSimon, D.D., third bishop of Amarillo, a scholarly historian who for years had been gathering materials for a life of Jean Marie Odin (first bishop of Galveston and later archbishop of New Orleans), which unhappily he did not live to complete. But Bishop FitzSimon's own researches contained a multitude of valuable references to Lamy, and these he gave to me without hesitancy or reservation. In the course of successive years of visits to Bishop FitzSimon in Amarillo, I felt that I had found not only a generous colleague but a wise and witty friend. I am indebted to Fr Ernest Burrus, S.J., of Rome, for sending me to Bishop FitzSimon in the first place.

Archbishop Byrne directed me to the diocesan archives gathered from all across the United States at the University of Notre Dame, where a rich store of material bearing on Lamy and associated persons is kept. There for a month or so I was made welcome as a resident guest of the university by its great president, the Very Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., who, like his faculty and particularly his archivist, the late Fr Thomas McAvoy, C.S.C., showed me every kindness. No trouble was too great for Fr McAvoy to undertake on behalf of my studies, always with high good spirits and that associative imagination which is the mark of a true scholar. The experience of living at Notre Dame, even for only a few winter weeks, was one of the happiest by-products of my long search for the archbishop.

I am grateful to the Abbé Garnaud, of the Ecole Massillon at Clermont-Ferrand, for innumerable courtesies and acts of guidance, including an introduction to the Reverend Mother Superior Thérèse Lucie Roy, of the Monastère de la Visitation de la Sainte Marie, at Riom. Mother Thérèse provided me with exquisite copies of the convent's collection of 113 autograph letters written by Bishop Machebeuf to his sister, Soeur Philomène, between 1839 and 1886. (A selection of these letters was translated by Fr W. J. Howlett and used as the basis of his life of Bishop Machebeuf, privately issued in 1908 at Pueblo, Colorado. It was his work which was the biographical source of Willa Gather's novel,
Death Comes for the Archbishop
, as Miss Cather stated in her book
On Writing
, 1949.)

I owe special thanks, too, for aid of various kinds to many others. Fr José S. Garcia, at the age of ninety-nine, my last living link with Lamy (who sent him to Niagara Falls to be educated for the priesthood), spoke with clear and delightful personal recollection of the archbishop. (Fr Garcia, who lived to be a hundred, told me further that his godfather, Kit Carson, gave his parents a twenty-dollar gold piece as a gift for the newly baptized child, which was prudently hidden behind a brick in the Garcia fireplace at Taos.) Senator Clinton P. Anderson of New Mexico, an expert bibliophile and collector in the field of the literature of the West, aided me with particular research facilities through the Library of Congress. I thank Associate Dean Martin Griffin of Yale College for giving my text a most useful critical reading, and for leading me to the archive formed by his great-grandfather, Martin Griffin, at St Charles Borromeo Seminary, where, after years of search elsewhere, I found Lamy's “Short History of the Pueblo Indians,” in a manuscript copy of the lost original.

I am grateful for aid of various kinds to Msgr John Tracy Ellis, of the University of San Francisco; Msgr Charles McManus, formerly of St Patrick's Cathedral, New York; Sister Mary Luke, the superior, and the late Sister Matilda Barrett, archivist, of the Loretto Motherhouse, Nerinckx, Kentucky; Msgr Joseph Gallagher, and Msgr P. Francis Murphy, archivist, of the Archdiocese of Baltimore; Fr Frederick D. McAninch, former archivist of the diocese of Tucson; Fr Donald F. Spitzka, C.M., and Fr Thomas Feely, C.M., of St Thomas Seminary, Denver; the Rev Homer Blubaugh, of St Mary's Seminary, Cincinnati; and, in Santa Fe, John Gaw Meem for his long-sustained encouragement; Fray Angelico Chavez; the Loretto Sisters of the Academy of Our Lady of
Light; and, for particularly constant and helpful support, Manuel J. Rodriguez.

For generous professional sponsorship I thank Roger W. Straus, Jr, of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Miss Virginia Rice, my highly effective agent for forty-two years (she closed her office in 1973). For admirable editorial response and assistance, I am grateful to Robert Giroux. I thank, too, Donald Berke for his excellent critical and other help on the final draft of the text; the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, under whose auspices and hospitality much of the book was written during my several periods as a Scholar in Residence; and Wesleyan University, where my post as continuing author in residence has provided me with a permanent base for my library, and every opportunity to work on my books. Once again the sustaining faith of Dr Henry Allen Moe, and the Guggenheim Foundation under his presidency, brought me a research grant which furthered my travels abroad in search of material.

I gratefully acknowledge the help of many more people and various institutions, and I list them here alphabetically with all respect: Arizona Pioneers Historical Society; P. Ball, Special Collections, University of Arizona Library; George Barringer, Georgetown University Library; Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (Herman Liebert, former director, Louis Martz, director); Jan Beyer, Georgetown University Library; Edward W. Bisett; Fr Thomas E. Blantz, C.S.C., Archivist, University of Notre Dame Library; Ruth Lapham Butler, Newberry Library; Msgr le Vicaire Général Chaumont, Clermont-Ferrand; M le Chanoine Chauvet, Nohanet, Puy-de-Dôme; Cincinnati Historical Society; Colorado State Historical Society; Fr Cuesta, Cristo Rey Parish, Santa Fe, N.M.; Fr Valdemar Cukuras, Pomfret, Conn.; Most Reverend James Peter Davis, retired Archbishop of Santa Fe; Elaine Delgado Romer; Isabel Echols; Gaylord Donnelley; Stephany Eger, Librarian, History Division, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe; Laura A. Ekstrom, Assistant Librarian, Colorado State Museum, Denver; Bruce Ellis; El Paso Public Library; Eleanor S. Ewing; John K. M. Ewing; M. l'Abbé Fanguet, Lempdes, Puy-de-Dôme; Joan Farrell; Catherine Farrelly; M. le Chanoine Fournier, Riom; Msgr Joseph Gallagher, Archivist, Archdiocese of Baltimore; Donald Gallup, Curator of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; José Ignacio Gallegos C., Durango, Mexico; Most Reverend Rudolf Gerken, seventh Archbishop of Santa Fe; S. E. Pierre Cardinal Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyon; Samuel M. Green, Wesleyan University; M l'Abbé Guillot, Secrétaire-General de l'Evêché, Clermont-Ferrand; Fr Edmund Halsey, former Archivist, St Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook, Pa.; Fr Charles Haluska, Mt Vernon, Ohio; Archibald Hanna, Curator of the Coe Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Edna Haran; the late Msgr Edward Hickey, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Detroit; Virginia P. Hoke, Southwest Reference Librarian, El Paso Public Library; Mr and Mrs Peter Hurd, San Patricio, N.M.; Fr Stanley Iverson, New Orleans; Dr Myra Jenkins, Director, New Mexico State Archives and Records Library; the late E. Dana Johnson, Santa Fe; Mrs Jordan, Cincinnati Historical Society; Kansas State Historical Society (Frank Miller, Nyle Miller, Joseph Snell, Don Wilson); George H. Kennedy; James Kraft; M le Chanoine Pierre Lacour, Ecole Massillon,
Clermont-Ferrand; Richard Lake, Secretary-Treasurer, A.T.S.F. Railway, To-peka, Kan.; Most Reverend Raymond Lessard, D.D., Bishop of Savannah; Mrs Ralph Levy; Mr and Mrs Goddard Lieberson; David McAllester, Wesleyan University; Fr Kieran McCarthy, O.F.M., Tucson, Ariz.; David McIntosh; Msgr G. Marchand, Lyon, France; Arthur Martin; William Maxwell; Fr Modell, St Mary's Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio; New Mexico Historical Society; Museum of New Mexico Historical Archives; Museum of New Mexico Library, Historical Division; New Mexico State Archives and Records Library; New Orleans Public Library; Robert Park, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Tex.; Francis Pawlowski; Mrs E. Frank Raynor; Fr Joseph A. Reade, Chaplain, Mt San Rafael Hospital, Trinidad, Colo.; Joseph W. Reed, Jr, Wesleyan University; Catherine Reese, Ryan Memorial Library, St Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook, Pa.; Msgr Walter F. Rosenzweig, Tucson, Ariz.; Saint Louis University, Saint Pius X Library; Richard Salazar, New Mexico Records Center and Archives, Santa Fe; Thomas V. Schmidt, Reference Division, Mullen Library, Catholic University of America; Douglas W. Schwartz; Tania Senff-Norton; John Spike; Fr Strieker, St Mary's Seminary, Cincinnati; the late Stanley Stubbs; Larry Taylor, Archivist, St Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook, Pa.; Joaquín del Valle, Mexico City; Fr Norman Whalen, Tucson, Ariz.; Mrs. Charles Whelan, Santa Fe, N.M.; and Bernard Wirth.