Origine et progrès de la mission du Kentucky, (Etats-Unis d'Amerique); par un Temoin Oculaire.
8vo. (1) f., 32 pp. Bound in recent blue paper over boards. Excellent.
Second edition, appearing the same year as the first, of this eye-witness account of missionary work in the American south. In 1793, Stephen Theodore Badin, a native of Orleans, became the first priest ordained in the United States by the Catholic church. A short while later he was appointed a missionary to Kentucky, with the center of work at Bardstown. Inexperienced and ignorant of frontier language and customs, Badin devoted all his efforts to the great challenge at hand. Although he was poor and often suffered for want of bare necessities, he became a church builder, loved and admired by Protestants and Catholics alike.
In 1819 Badin returned to his native land determined to raise money for his missionary projects. This small book, by an able priest, graphically describes the work of early Catholic missionaries in central Kentucky between 1793 and 1819- Clark, 135.
The first edition of this work also appeared in 1821, omitting the parenthetical subtitle Etats-Unis d'Amerique. OCLC lists Fordham, Georgetown, Loyola (Chicago), Clarke Hist. Lib. (MI), State Hist. Soc. (WI).
* Sabin 2710.
Price: $975.00