Possibly A Unique Survival -- Earliest Printed Image of St. Henry's Church in New Orleans
Rare separately published view of the the Saint Henry Catholic Church and Mission, likely issued as a means of fundraising for the construction or operations of the Church in the early 1870s.
The present view is likely the earliest surviving view of the Church and Mission. It includes several blank lines and was likely intended as keepsake to commemorate contributions to the construction of the church or funding of Mother Pauline Von Mallinckrodt's mission and church in New Orleans.
The Congregation of the Mission, popularly known initially as Lazarists and later as Vincentians in the United States, is a worldwide community of priests and brothers founded in France by St. Vincent de Paul on January 25, 1625. In 1818 a small group of Vincentians established their first house in the United States at Perryville, Missouri. Within twenty years Vincentians had been sent to St. Louis and New Orleans.
The Vincentian Fathers of the parent parish of St. Stephen initiated St. Henry's to meet the spiritual needs of the growing German population of the city of Jefferson. During reconstruction days, the first United States Convent of The Congregation of The Sisters of Christian Charity, founded in Germany by Mother Pauline Von Mallinckrodt in 1849, opened at Saint Henry's in 1873. The order arrived in America and first settled in New Orleans. Von Mallinckrodt arrived in the United States herself on June 7 1873 to open Saint Henry's and oversee further expansion.
Rarity
The view is apparently unrecorded.