(click to enlarge photos)


Judging by the scrapbook* of collected stories told about him, Roman Catholic Priest Father Francis X. Prefontaine was one of Seattle’s more beloved pioneers. C.T. Conover, himself a pioneer as well as long-time and often-quoted Times correspondent, described Prefontaine as “large, ruddy, genial and jovial with a liking for his fellowman.” His relaxed candor included a taste for expensive cigars, whiskey, and real estate. His reputation as a fine cook mixed well with his conviviality.

There were about ten Roman Catholics living in Seattle in 1868 when the thirty-year-old priest relocated here from Port Townsend to make a try at building Seattle’s first Catholic Church, largely with his own hands. It is mildly ironic that he named it Our Lady of Good Help, for Prefontaine was from the start a skilled persuader of Puget Sound’s volunteering distaffs – some of them Protestants – who were, in turn, persuasive in their own communities. Prefontaine the impresario scheduled fairs and entertainments from Port Townsend to Olympia to raise funds. Beyond permission from the bishop to build a church, as a secular priest he received no direct help from either the archdiocese or any religious order.

Prefontaine, architect, painter and decorator, set the foundation for his parish at the northeast corner of Third Avenue and Washington Street. He recalled, “Every foot of it was covered with monster trees and dense undergrowth.” An eight-foot thick fir that measured 230 feet was cut and planed for, at least, the sills of the church’s windows. Behind the church the priest also built a rockery beside a stream that ran off First Hill. He kept a garden there for vegetables and flowers. When dedicated in 1870, the little church – thirty by sixty feet – seated one-hundred. Time’s columnist Conover adjusted this, “It would hold about 200 people if the majority were children, and most of them were.”


A decade later, by the evidence of the 1880 national census, Seattle had surpassed Walla Walla as the official boomtown of Washington Territory. In 1882 Our Lady of Good Help was enlarged with new wings and a spreading shingle roof that, the story goes, was somewhat miraculously saved from destruction during the city’s Great Fire of 1889. Conover, again, “reveals” that in the midst of sparks and falling embers, an “old lady came and sprinkled some water on the front around the entrance. A workman explained, ‘The church is safe, she is sprinkling it with holy water’.” (A local weather watcher credited a change in the wind.) In the Spring of 1903, on the urging of Prefontaine and others, Bishop Edward J. O’Dea moved his territorial see from Vancouver to Seattle and claimed Our Lady of Good Help as his pro-cathedral. The Bishop, however, soon changed his mind about building the archdiocese cathedral in the place of Prefontaine’s Our Lady of Good Help. The parish’s surrounds had become home to too many sinners: a skid road mix of both parlor and box houses. O’Dea wrote to the Vatican, “the Church of Our Lady of Good Help is located in the most disreputable section of the city of Seattle, and is almost surrounded by houses of ill fame. A great number of Catholics object to attend it on that account.” The Bishop sold the church and looked to First Hill.


Next week we will conclude with a few more of the barely turned the pages of the Prefontaine scrapbook.* (*THIS MAY WELL be misleading. There is no “Prefontaine scrapbook” so far as we known. We mean the entire opera of his work as revealed in often scattered articles and photos and such.)

WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, guys? Surely jean. Ron has once again put up an Edge Attachment of many features that related by subject, spirit or neighborhood. They have all appeared in past blogs. By now you will be familiar with many of them. Remember please my mother’s admonition. “Repetition is the mother of all learning.” These will be followed by a berry basket full of other features. Which reminds us to once again appeal to some zestful reader to help us scan the remaining features for use here and elsewhere. There are about 1400 of them. Ron has also come up with a portable scanner to help.
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NEXT WEEK WE WILL VISIT THE “NEW” OUR LADY THAT WAS BUILT AT THE SOUTHEAST CORNER OF FIFTH AVENUE and JEFFERSON Street.
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