Chronicles of Notre Dame du Lac
Edward Sorin, CSC -- Translated by John M. Toohey, CSC, 1895

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1842-1843

pg 40        novitiate of Brothers should be there erected.  The land may have 
             been worth fifteen to twenty thousand francs at the time.
                  It was therefore F. Badin who in 1830 had made it the centre 
             of some Catholic settlements scattered over northern Indiana and 
             western Michigan.  He had also found and gathered together a 
             considerable number of savages, mostly of the Pottawatomies, whose 
             first apostle he was in this country, and with not a little 
             success.
                  Especially after he received F. Deseille as his assistant, 
             the savages were converted by the hundreds.  The former lived in 
             these parts for only a few years.  F. Deseille seemed destined to 
             have a much longer stay, but death carried him off from his dear 
             Indians in 1837.  It was in the poor hovel described above that 
             he terminated his pious career, after administering holy 
             communion to himself.
                  The excellent Mr. B. Petit, a young lawyer of Rennes, who had 
             become a missionary of the diocese of Vincennes, was sent the day 
             after his ordination to replace the zealous departed priest.  He 
             also took up his abode at St. Mary of the Lakes, where he lived 
             but a few months, death cutting down this excellent priest at the 
             very beginning of his career, when he had become exceedingly