"Father Clark," or The Pioneer Preacher

by John Mason Peck

C. “No, Monsieur Musick. I can not permit no such ting; ’tis against de law; you must all be bon Catholique in dis contree. Very sorry, Mons. Musick, I cannot oblige you, but I must follow de ‘Regulacion.’”

Discouraged at this decision, in a tone so magisterial, Mr. M. regarded any farther effort hopeless, and arose to depart from the office, when, with a gracious countenance, the commandant said:

“Sit down, Mons. Musick; please sit down; I soon get dis paper fix for dese gentlehomme who wait; and den we talk. You must eat my dinner, and drink a glass of my bon vin. You and I are good friend, though I cannot let you make a church house.”

After dispatching the business on hand, M. Trudeau insisted on the company of Mr. Musick to dinner. While discoursing with volubility in his imperfect English, the wily commandant adverted to the petition, so unceremoniously rejected in the office.

C. “You understand me, Monsieur Musick, I presume. You must not put—what do you call him—un colcher,[48] on your house and call it a church;—dat is all wrong,—you must make no bell ring. And now hear me, Mons. Musick, you must let no man baptize your enfant but de parish priest. But if your friend come to see you—your neighbor come there,—you conversez;—you say prayer;—you read Bible—you sing song—dat is all right—you all bon Catholique.”

Mr. Clark from the time he left Georgia had been reading the Scriptures, to find out the character of a church, such as those congregations named in Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, etc. He was then a Baptist so far as infant baptism was concerned, and he doubted much whether any uninspired human authority could change the form approved by Christ, without destroying the institution. And the majority of the people, being Baptists, had no use for the parish priest for that ceremony. The interdiction of spire and bell was no inconvenience in their simple form of worship. Unlike the Catholic, their religion had no connection with bell-ringing.

While this disposition of a perplexing question to the commandant accommodated the American settlers, it gave no legal countenance to the visits of a preacher from another nation, and a different religion,—but the people came out to the meetings with less fear of the prison. Mr. Clark continued his visits nearly every month, which did not escape the notice of the commandant. He soon learned the period of his visits, and some two or three days before his return to Illinois, he never failed to send a threatening message into the country that, “If Mons. Clark did not leave the Spanish country in three days, he would be put in the calabozo.” So regularly came this message that it became a standing jest with his friends to enquire, “Well, brother Clark, when do you go to the calabozo?” “In three days,” would be the reply, which all understood to mean crossing the river to the Illinois side.

In the autumn of 1801, Rev. Thomas R. Musick, a relative of the Musick families, came to the province on a visit. His residence then was in the Green river district in Kentucky, and he had been in a revival of religion for several months, and about one hundred converts had been baptized. His brother was the one who petitioned the commandant for privilege to hold meetings, and his uncle was one of the residents in the Spanish country. Coming from the midst of an extensive and powerful revival of religion, he was in the spirit of preaching, and cared little for the Spanish calabozo. He visited every family, in which professors of religion were to be found, in the districts of St. Louis and St. Charles, and during three weeks’ sojourn, preached fifteen times to congregations assembled in log cabins and in the woods, on short notice to hear him. He was threatened with the calabozo repeatedly. In a frontier settlement above St. Charles, he preached the funeral sermon of a Baptist by name of Brown, from Kentucky, who had died there that season.

Mr. Musick left the province with the determination to return with his family and settle there, soon as he could be permitted to remain and preach the gospel; and with this end in view, he removed to the settlement of New Design in Illinois.

Soon as the news of the cession of the country to the United States reached his ears, without waiting for its confirmation by the government, and the actual transfer, he went across the great river in the autumn of 1803, and made that country his home. Mr. Musick was the first preacher of the gospel who, with his family, settled in the country, became one of the constituents of Fefee’s Creek, and was its pastor for more than thirty years.