Sermons of the Rev. Francis A. Baker, Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul / With a Memoir of His Life

by Francis A. Baker

"Yours, very truly, etc.
"Macon, December 31, 1856."

From Savannah, F. Baker, with two companions, went to give a mission in Augusta. On the pages of the Mission Records several interesting incidents of this mission are related. On the first Sunday morning of the mission, three gentlemen called on the fathers, all of whom, it appeared, were converts. One of them was called Dr. W. B., the second, his nephew, Dr. M., and the third was the overseer of Dr. B.'s plantation. This Dr. B. had been received into the Catholic Church some months previously, and had entered a Catholic church for the first time that morning. He was a man of fine and genteel appearance, with gray hair and a long, black beard, an intelligent and educated physician. So great was his excitement, and so wonderful did every thing which he saw that may appear through the magnifying glass of his imagination, that on his return home that night, at eleven o'clock, he awoke his brother and made him get up and light a fire, that he might relate the events of the day. As a sample of the proportion in which he viewed the whole, it may suffice to say that he described one of the fathers as seven and a-half feet high—at least six inches taller than the Georgia giant. The brother alluded to, also a physician and planter, made his appearance a day or two later. He was quite an elderly gentleman, with an intelligent countenance and a magnificent patriarchal beard. A painter could not find a better head for an Apostle, or for one of the ancient Bishops or Fathers of the Church than his. He was a man with an intellect like Brownson's, and full of information. He became a Catholic a few years ago from reading Brownson's Review. Since that time he has been a great champion of the Church, and, through his influence, his own family, his brother and sister, his nephew and some others, have also been converted. One of the latter was then residing in Dr. B.'s own family, and was leading a most remarkably penitential life. This gentleman (a Mr. S.), of high birth and education, was formerly a lawyer, and a married man of large property. He was renowned for his courage, and had fought with one of the most celebrated duellists of South Carolina, named R. This gentleman lost his property and was abandoned by his wife. About seven years before he had become a Catholic, he lived for a considerable time with his brother, an unprincipled and ferocious man, who scarcely allowed him a bare pittance. He was dressed in rags, was barefooted, and lived on bread which he baked himself.

After a few years, when Dr. B. had become a Catholic, and opened a small chapel on his own plantation, Mr. S. appeared there one day at Mass in his miserable plight. Dr. R. invited him to stay with him, and gave him a small office to live in, and all other things requisite for his comfort. Here he had been living ever since, leading the life of a saint, and passing a great portion of his time in reading Catholic books, especially Brownson's Review, which he knew almost by heart. The Doctor said that the only thing which could excite his anger, was to hear anyone speak against Brownson, or contradict any thing he says. As an instance of his penance, I will relate how, according to Dr. B.'s account, he attempted to pass one Lent. He had been reading the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, and he endeavored to imitate their example precisely and to the letter. His whole food consisted of a small quantity of bread, and during the last three days he wanted to fast entirely, but Dr. B. threatened that, if he did, he would send a little negro for Father B., to excommunicate him. He was wasted to a skeleton, and did not recover the effects of his fasting for six months afterward. On one occasion, Mr. S. found a poor, sick negro, with no one to attend him, and not contented with waiting on him and taking care of him, as he was constantly in the habit of doing for all the sick within several miles' distance, he washed his feet, and, for want of a towel, wiped them with his pocket-handkerchief. It was necessary to watch him, lest he might give away his clothes to the negroes and when he needed new clothes, they were put secretly in his way, and the old ones removed.

Others in this neighborhood, who were not yet Catholics, were so well disposed that they had their children baptized. Edgefield and the country round about was formerly celebrated for the lawless and violent character of the population, for the frequency of murders, and for the bitter prejudice existing against the Catholic Church; so much so, that a priest could not obtain the Court-House to preach in. When the elder Dr. B. became a Catholic, Dr. W. B. declared that he would burn up his wife and children and his whole house before they should become Catholics, and any priest who should chance to come near him. Another gentleman, since a convert, said that, if one of his children should become a Catholic, he would take him by the heels and dash out his brains against a stone wall. Dr. M., when he went to study medicine with his uncle, the elder Dr. B., made a vow that he would never enter the chapel and never desert the faith of his fathers; and his parents told him on leaving home that, if he became a Catholic, he should never cross the Savannah River again or see their faces. After some months, he became silent and melancholy. For a while he concealed the cause, but at last, one evening he told his aunt that he could hold out no longer, and was a Catholic at heart. Shortly after receiving his medical diploma, he determined to renounce the practice of medicine, and has recently been ordained to the priesthood.

At Edgefield a lot of seven acres was purchased in the middle of the town, for a church, to be built of brown stone, in the Gothic style. Five gentlemen had already subscribed sixteen hundred dollars for the church, and Father B. was collecting for the same purpose. There was a general inclination throughout the whole town to embrace the Catholic faith, and already there is a small band of the best Catholics in the country there—souls that have been led by the great God Himself, by the wonderful ways of His most holy grace. Dr. B. has since died, and what has been the fate of the little congregation, and of the beautiful church which was commenced, during the troubles and miseries of the civil war, I know not. They have not, however, hindered the Catholics of Augusta from completing and paying for a large and costly church, the successor of a very good and commodious edifice of brick where the mission was given.

After leaving Augusta, we went to Savannah once more, and on the 29th of January went on board the little steamer Gen. Clinch, which was afterward turned into a gunboat during the civil war, to begin our voyage by the inland route to St. Augustine, Florida. This inland route has some peculiar and picturesque features. The steamer passes down the Savannah River, with its banks lined with the green and gold orange trees, until, near the mouth, it turns into its proper route, leading through a succession of small sounds, connected by narrow, serpentine rivers, where you seem to be sailing over the meadows, usually in sight of the ocean, and quite often aground for some hours at a time. The steamer was very small and very crowded, our progress very leisurely and interrupted by several long stoppages, so that our voyage was protracted for five days. It is seldom that a more motley or singular and amusing group of passengers is collected in a small cabin. Besides the three Catholic priests, who were to the others the greatest curiosities on board, we had an army lieutenant, since then the commander of a corps d'armée in the great civil war, an old wizard who was consulting his familiar spirits incessantly for the amusement or information of the passengers; a plantation doctor, a wild young Arkansas lawyer of the fire-eating type, a professor of mathematics, a crotchety, good-humored New York farmer, with very peculiar religious opinions, a young man who professed himself a universal sceptic, two or three gentlemen of education and polished manners, who were not at all singular, but appeared quite so in such an odd assemblage; and some others in no way remarkable. The cramped accommodations, the long voyage, and the usual bonhommie which prevails on such occasions were well fitted to draw out all the oddities and idiosyncrasies of the company. The spiritualist, who was an uneducated and uncouth specimen of humanity, with a great deal of native shrewdness, and a good-humored, loquacious disposition, was the center of attraction. The professor and the philosophical farmer engaged with him in a long and earnest discussion of spiritualism, which ended in his exhibiting his powers as a consulter of the spirits. Most of the passengers made trial of his skill in this respect, although his performance was the most patent of silly impostures, only amusing from its absurdity. The professor tried him sorely by asking him a question which seemed to have caused himself many an hour of anxious and fruitless thought, and which he appeared to despair of solving metaphysically: "Can God annihilate space?" The old gentleman's spirit did not appear to have investigated this question to his own complete satisfaction, for he gave him no positive answer. He was silent for a moment, with a puzzled look, evidently fearing a trap, and at last answered, "I don't know, but I guess He could if He tried; He made it, and I guess He could annihilate it." Just as the professor was going to retire to his berth, the old man took revenge by telling him that he had just been informed by the spirits that one of his children was sick of scarlet fever. The wizard left the boat at Brunswick, but as the conversation had taken a religious and philosophical turn at first, it continued in that direction, the two individuals before mentioned being the principal interlocutors. We did not join much in it, as it was evidently distasteful to several of the company, who wished to read quietly or converse on ordinary topics. Before we parted, however, one of our number took the opportunity which offered itself of having a little pleasant and rational discussion with the professor and one or two others, who were really intelligent and well-informed. On New Year's Day we remained several hours at St. Mary's, Georgia, where we found the mayor of the place to be a Catholic gentleman, of Acadian descent, and were hospitably entertained at his house. The boat passed the night at Fernandina, and the next day we went out of the St. Mary's River, across a short and dangerous stretch of ocean between a line of breakers and the shore, into the St. John's, and up that romantic river, so full of historical associations. Friday evening saw us befogged above Jacksonville, and on Saturday morning we learned to our dismay that our captain was going past our landing, and on to Pilatka, which would keep us on board his miserable little craft until the next week, and prevent the opening of the mission on the Sunday. Touching for a few moments at Fleming's Island, we found friends at the little dock, who were passing the winter on the island, and who informed us that we could go from there that afternoon to our destination. We debarked accordingly, our friend the professor in company with us, and were refreshed with a good breakfast at the hotel where our friends were lodging, and a stroll around the little island. On the arrival of the steamer, the whole party went on board and proceeded to Picolata, where we took stage-coaches for St. Augustine, arriving there on Saturday evening. About halfway between Picolata and St. Augustine there is a post-house, where, in the last Florida War with the Seminole Indians, a party of travelling actors were surprised and murdered by Indians, who dressed themselves in their fantastic costumes, and in that guise made a hostile demonstration in the neighborhood of St. Augustine.

To Americans, this old town seems to have a vast antiquity, claiming as it does the respectable age of three centuries. The Catholic church here is almost as old as Protestantism, and a brief of St. Pius V., in regard to some of the religious affairs of this colony, is still extant. There are remnants of an old wall in several places, and a large fortress built in Spanish times, and called the castle of St. Marco, where you may yet see the marks of the cannon-shot fired at the invasion of Oglethorpe from Georgia. This fort might serve as a scene for the plot of a new "Mysteries of Udolfo," it is so unlike any thing modern, and so thoroughly Spanish and mediæval. It is not, however, of a sort to make one regret the past. Its dark, damp casemates look like prisons, especially one frightful dungeon, which is a cell within a cell, without any embrasure, and admitting no light or air except that which comes through the door opening into the outer casemate. This was the cell of the greatest criminals. In one of these casemates, Wildcat, the celebrated Indian chief, was once confined with a companion. Although cruel and blood-thirsty, Wildcat was a great warrior, and a man gifted with a high order of genius, an orator, a poet, and a true cavalier of the forest. On pretence of illness, he and his companion reduced their bulk as much as possible by a low diet and purgative medicines, and by the aid of a knife, which he had secreted and used as a spike by thrusting it into the wall of soft concrete, with a rope dexterously made from strips of his bed-clothes, he clambered to the high and narrow embrasure, squeezed himself through, not without scraping the skin from his breast, and let himself down into the moat. His companion followed him, but fell to the ground, breaking his leg. Nevertheless, Wildcat carried him off, seized a stray mule, and escaped to his tribe in the forest. After the conclusion of the war, he went to Mexico, where he became the alcalde of an Indian village, and did his new country essential service by leading a body of Indian warriors, armed with Mississippi rifles, against a band of filibusters from the United States. Osceola, the half-breed king of the Seminoles, who was not only a hero, but a just and humane man, was also captured near St. Augustine, by treachery and bad faith, and confined in this fortress for a time, but afterward removed to Charleston, where he died of a broken heart. The great mahogany treasure-chest of Don Juan Menendez is still remaining in the fortress, and in one of the casemates are remnants of a rude stone altar and holy-water stoups, marking the site of a chapel. The fortress is kept in good preservation by our Government, and a noble sea-wall extends from it to the barracks at the other end of the town, which are established in an ancient Franciscan monastery. A great part of the old city is in ruins. The old Spanish families left the country when it was ceded by Spain to the United States, and the resident inhabitants are Minorcans, negroes, and a small number of settlers from the other portions of the United States. The Minorcans are descendants of a body of colonists, brought to Florida under false pretences by an English speculator, who enslaved them, and kept them for a long time in that state before they became aware that there was any way of escaping from it. When they did take courage to shake off the yoke, they removed to the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, where they retain their language, a dialect of the Spanish, with their ancient, simple character and habits. The illustrious Spanish names which some of them bear amused us greatly. Sanchez was the proprietor of a line of slow coaches. Suarez had charge of F. Madeore's farm, and Ximenes served Mass. The church is a large Spanish structure, built, as are most of the houses, of soft concrete formed from sea-shells. On a green in front of it stands the only remaining monument, erected in commemoration of the formation of the Spanish Constitution of 1814. The tower has a chime of small bells, which are rung in a most joyous, clashing style, according to the Spanish custom, for festive occasions, and with a peculiarly plaintive peal for deaths and funerals. The cemetery is called Tolomato, which was the name of an Indian village formerly occupying its site. The ruins of an ancient mission chapel are still to be seen there, where F. Roger, a French Jesuit, was murdered by an apostate Indian chief and his warriors. After killing F. Roger, the band proceeded to another chapel, called Nuestra Señora de Leche, where they found a priest just robed for Mass. He requested the chief to allow him to say Mass, and his desire was granted, the savages prostrating themselves with their faces to the ground while he performed the holy function, lest the sight of him should soften their hearts. After Mass he knelt at the foot of the altar, and received a blow from the tomahawk which made him a martyr.