Letter to the People of Perryville
Soon, the owners of St. Mary’s of the Barrens Seminary (the Vincentians) in Perryville, Missouri, will memorialize and apologize for their participation in slavery before the Civil War. This is important to many people, not just the people of Perryville.
I have roots in Perryville. My grandfather was Thomas J. Elder, town barber, a devout Catholic, and a proud supporter of ‘The Seminary’—as real Perryvillians like to refer to it—where three of his (many) grandsons were educated. (God bless his memory!). The seminary has a very special place in the history of Perryville and Perry County in general.
Perryville is a small town seventy miles south of St. Louis; it looks today like a throwback to the early 20th century. It is a town where people know each other well, help each other out, and have shown great faith in Christianity. In 1818, Catholics from the area donated six hundred acres that the seminary was built on. The people did this as an act of faith, because having the clergy in their area was important.
But not much faith was shown when it came to diversity. The people of Perryville seem to fear integration, and acted on that fear for much of the twentieth century. Both the history of Perryville and of the seminary mirror the larger story of race relations in this country. The very roots of racial distrust can be seen in Perryville, Missouri.
Since the beginnings of St. Mary’s in 1818, the whole crux of whether the seminary would grow and prosper hinged on having enough manual labor. Labor to harvest the acreage the seminary had in crops. Labor to construct buildings for shelter, services, and classrooms. Labor for the many domestic chores in the immediate seminary community.
In other words, to grow and prosper, the seminary used slaves.
Skilled free labor in Missouri, circa the 1820–30s, the kind we all know about today, was scarce. The Vincentians, brand new owners of St. Mary’s, were not prepared for the dilemma that faced them. The original Vincentians in 1818 were just off the boat from Italy.
The Rev. Joseph Rosati, cm (later to be the first bishop of St. Louis) was the first to face this very harsh dilemma. The Vincentians, who were still learning American culture and customs, wanted to avoid ‘the peculiar institution’ at all costs. Avoiding slavery was at the heart of many discussions among the Vincentians.
But the desire to grow their new seminary won out in the end. Or, at least until 1861, when the Civil War began. Rosati and his successors used rented slaves to deal with the construction, the farm labor, and other domestic chores involved in building the seminary. The seminarians would become members of the clergy, and eventually help the Catholic Church grow in America.
The Vincentians were not the only religious group that participated in slavery and prospered because of it. Most notably, the Jesuits of Georgetown University owned (and sold) over 200 slaves that worked in various capacities before the war. Other groups around the South had much smaller numbers, but those they enslaved suffered the same as those enslaved at St. Mary’s.
The Vincentians, the Jesuits, and many other religious groups are actively searching for ways to begin a process of repair. If the historical records are there, restitution. Georgetown, for example, has dedicated a program and scholarships to the families of those they enslaved. Lacking the detailed records that Georgetown has, the Vincentians are undertaking a different approach.
The Vincentians (myself included) are in the midst of collaborating with an African-American artist to make a 3-D public art piece, one that will visualize this remorse. The artwork will be situated on grounds formed by the hands of the enslaved.
The Vincentians as a group are making this public art in a further commitment to help end racism and bigotry wherever they find it. They — we — are starting with ourselves. We understand the sensitivities and fear that this subject raises for many white Americans. But we as a group are ready to do something that our predecessors did not: acknowledge that we did something wrong, and dedicate ourselves to doing everything we can to do things in a better way.
Admittedly, my grandfather, Thomas J. Elder, would take issue with what is being proposed at his seminary. He and others in the 1920s made sure that migrating Black families did not get off the train in Perryville. It did not matter to them what these Black people were trying to escape in the cotton fields of the south. ‘Just keep them moving north’, they said. Fear is a prime motivator. Grease it up with a little ignorance, and it can go a long way.
Time has brought many changes to ‘The Seminary.’ It used to be possible to get a college education there. That day has passed, but the Vincentians say you can still learn at the seminary. That learning may include some uncomfortable truths.
