The mother of the Blessed Virgin was, after all, already the patroness of Quebec, from which they had set out to establish the new community. The shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupre in Quebec had been in existence since 1658, and the basilica that was eventually erected continues to be a major draw for pilgrims in our own time.
And to cinch the choice, it was on the feast of St. Anne, July 26, 1701 — two days after their arrival at what is now Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit — that construction began on the first building of what would become Ste. Anne de Detroit Parish.
Now in its eighth building — the twin-spired 1886 Gothic edifice next to the Ambassador Bridge — the parish is the second oldest continuously operating parish in the United States (second only to the Cathedral Basilica Parish of St. Augustine in St. Augustine, Fla., founded in 1565).
From its beginning as the chapel for Fort Pontchartrain, Ste. Anne de Detroit was also intended to serve the French settlers who accompanied the soldiers, and also to be a base of evangelization to the Indians who would also make their settlements in the area.
Whereas the French were not typically great promoters of civilian settlement — a policy that was eventually to doom New France to fall to the British — Cadillac was an exception. He envisioned more than just a fort and trading post for his new community.
Cadillac’s concept called for French settlers and tradesmen to make their homes in the area, and for five Indian tribes to also establish villages in the vicinity.
It was Cadillac’s hope that the French and the Indians would form trading relationships to their mutual advantage, thereby keeping the tribes aligned with French interests and immune to overtures by the British.
And, not surprisingly, other relationships also formed, so that one of the first baptisms recorded in the new parish register (after the old one was consumed in the blaze that destroyed that first chapel just two years after it was built) was of a child born to a French man and an Indian woman.
The priests who served Ste. Anne’s were most successful in their evangelization efforts with the Huron Indians, whose village was across the strait, or as we know it, the Detroit River. A chapel was built for them, and the present-day successor to that first “Huron Church” in 1738 is today’s Assumption Church, next to the Ambassador Bridge on the Windsor side.
Fire would also consume the parish’s sixth church, along with almost every other building in the small community in 1805. Detroit’s Great Fire left standing only one structure, known as the stone warehouse, and that is where Masses were celebrated until the parish could begin building a new stone church of its own.
Parishioners had managed to save the altar from the burning church, and that altar was used in the warehouse and later in the basement of the new church site in the years before the parish could afford to erect the superstructure. It still exists today, in a cemetery chapel in Marshall, the only known surviving artifact of pre-fire Detroit.
The outstanding figure associated with Ste. Anne de Detroit from the 1790s to the 1830s was its pastor, Fr. Gabriel Richard. One of only two French priests willing to stay in the Midwest after the British withdrawal (the other was in what was to become Missouri), Richard initially had responsibility for the pastoral care of all the Catholics in the area that was to become Michigan and Wisconsin.
The 1818 stone church, as it’s generally called, marked a huge advance for the congregation of Ste. Anne de Detroit, and was the last of its churches built in the immediate downtown area.
Actually, the French community had been generally moving away from the center of town ever since the British handed the area over to the United States in 1796. The British had taken over in 1760, but didn’t bring many British subjects. With American control, however, Americans started arriving.
And as Americans began to pour in, the French tended to move north, where many of the descendants can be found in Macomb County communities such as St. Clair Shores and Harrison Township, or south towards the Downriver area or into Monroe County.
In its eighth church, in southwest Detroit, Ste. Anne de Detroit continued to be a French parish in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with it fine Ecole de Ste. Anne (parish school) next door and its convent and rectory forming a large complex of buildings.
The parish continues today, with a mostly Hispanic membership. It is under the direction of the Basilian Fathers, and Fr. Thomas Sepulveda, CSB, is its pastor.
Ste. Anne de Detroit Parish is at 1000 Ste. Anne St., Detroit 48216. For more information, call (313) 496-1701 or go to www.ste-anne.org.
