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

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1842-1843

pg 44             If the missions should develop, they will be an additional 
             benefit to the locality, and as there was then no Catholic 
             college in all the surrounding country, not even in Detroit and 
             Chicago, the hopes of their finding the means of making a 
             livelihood encouraged the Society at once to build that which 
             stands there today.

                              5.  Preparations for the College

2000fr.           F. Sorin arrived at the Lake with about two thousand francs; 
equals       the bishop, who had himself received the collection of Mr. 
$400         Delaune, might have at their disposal four or five thousand, 
             including two thousand six hundred granted this year by the 
             Propagation of the Faith.  This was indeed but little towards 
             establishing a community consisting already of more than twenty 
             persons, and who expected a new colony of priests, brothers, and 
             sisters towards the beginning of the following season.
                  However, neither the small amount of their present 
             possessions nor the bareness of the place nor the thousand 
             difficulties inseparable from such an enterprise in a centre 
             almost wholly Protestant, could discourage our hardy pioneers.