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    Saint William Church, Durant: A Centennial History
    Saint William Church, Durant: A Centennial History
    Saint William Church, Durant: A Centennial History
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    Saint William Church, Durant: A Centennial History

    By Henry L. Harder

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    Influx into the Choctaw Nation in the late nineteenth century included the development of a town that began when a wheel-less boxcar was left beside the KATY railroad tracks. That town is Durant.

    The Catholic Church received a visible, permanent status in Durant with the establishment of Saint Catherines Mission. The mission became a parish in 1912 with the assignment of a resident pastor. By the middle of the twentieth century, new facilities were necessary and, when a new church was built, the name of the parish was changed to Saint William.

    The author sketches the history of Saint Catherines and Saint Williams from its beginnings to the present day, which is the centennial of the congregations status as a parish. Not only are the clergy and religious who served the people featured, issues faced over the years are detailed. Also, a few of those laypersons whose support escapes the anonymity normally afforded the congregants are mentioned.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateNov 5, 2012
    ISBN9781477276501
    Saint William Church, Durant: A Centennial History
    Author

    Henry L. Harder

    The author, a great-grandson of August and Louise Harder, has had unfettered access to Augusts handwritten family history. Through exhaustive search of the public documents, interviews with Augusts daughter and with several grandchildren, and the cooperation of many family members who provided information and images, the author has compiled a comprehensive account of the Harder family from its time in Wismar, Germany to its roots in Arkansas to its present dispersion throughout the USA.

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      Book preview

      Saint William Church, Durant - Henry L. Harder

      © 2012 by Saint William Church, Durant, OK. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 10/26/2012

      ISBN: 978-1-4772-7653-2 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4772-7652-5 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4772-7650-1 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2012918376

      Cover Photos by Jim Harmon

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Contents

      Preface

      A Short History of The Catholic Church in Durant, Oklahoma

      Catholicism comes to Indian Territory

      The Church comes to Durant: Saint Catherine of Siena

      Saint Catherine Becomes a Parish

      Saint Catherine School

      Unsettled Times: the 1920s to the 1940s

      A New Church and a New Name for the Parish

      Victory Noll and the Catechetical Center

      The 1970s and After

      Vocations from Saint William Ministries

      Saint William Today

      A Short Reading List

      Preface

      I was approached in October 2011 for help in creating a Discernment Report for St. William Parish to present to the Diocese of Tulsa Finance Council, seeking permission to begin a capital campaign to built new facilities. Actually what happened was that Marilyn Hitchcock contacted my son Father Kenneth Harder, who is well-known at St. William, but he referred her to me. So I was stuck between the rock of family solidarity and the hard place of helping a petitioner.

      For the next nine months I worked with various St. William parishioners in creating what the Diocese requires. Usually it was my asking for information, data, or names and taking the answers to build the report. At times, it was waiting for the parish to finalize its plans. Skip ahead to August 2012 and you have the parish presenting its case to the Council.

      In the meantime, as I worked my interest broadened. I quickly noted that Father Hippolyte Topet, O.S.B. came from Coalgate to found St. Catherine Mission in Durant in 1898. Bishop Meerschaert raised the mission to the status of a parish in 1912 and gave it a resident pastor. The parish name changed in 1952 to St. William when it built a new church building. In 2002 St. William celebrated the 50th anniversary of the building of the church. No one, however, seemed to be concerned to note that 2012 was the centenary of its establishment as a parish, or as the canon lawyers would say, a juridic person.

      My intellectual curiosity was aroused, and I thought the history of the parish was a topic worth researching. Although there were brief recitations of the parish’s history, both published and not published, no systematic investigation had been done. I thought it might be interesting to complete a parish history in this 100th anniversary year. This book is the result of those efforts.

      If I were to cite every source I have used, such as sacramental registers, U.S. Censuses, and such, it might make this work look more scholarly, but it would encumber the text with such a burden that no one would want to read the book. I chose a good read over a scholarly tome. I do give a short list for further reading if this history excites your intellectual curiosity.

      Naturally, no one builds ex nihilo, from nothing. There is always something prior that one uses to construct his own work. In this case, I must acknowledge in the first place Father James D. White, Oklahoma Church historian par excellence. His published works have been gold mines to me, and discussions with him are diamonds that led me to improve my text. Marilyn Hitchcock has been invaluable in providing materials and arranging for me to visit parishioners. Archivists were uniformly prompt and helpful: Joey Spencer of the Diocese of Tulsa, Wanda Lane of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, Lisa May of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, Jeff Hoffman of Our Lady of Victory Missionary Sisters, Sister Veronica Sokoloski, O.S.B. of Saint Joseph Monastery, and Sister Louise Smith, S.S.M.N. of Our Lady of Victory Center. Also, Jim Harmon has been generous in sharing knowledge as well as seeking answers for me; I also used his talents as a photographer.

      I am indebted to Jack Accountius, Pat Accountius, Albert Miller, Janet Miller, Joan Minks, Kathy Moore, David Norris, Margaret Scheibe, Bruce Schultz, Sharon Sullivan, Barbara Summerlin, and Sarah Voorhies for their insights and their time. Priests of the Diocese of Tulsa who have contributed to this work are Father Paul Eichhoff, Father Joe Townsend, and the current pastor of St. William Father Valerian Gonsalves.

      Not only do I acknowledge my debt to these persons, I wish to thank them publicly. And lastly, I acknowledge that any errors in this work are mine alone.

      A colleague of mine once told me in her finest North Carolina drawl, Harder, the best thing you have going for you is Ramona. She was right, of course. And I could not have completed this project without her unfailing help in ways too manifold to mention; wife, helpmate, and partner par excellence. Further, I would not have undertaken the project, save for the fact that she entered the Church at St. William and received the Sacrament of Confirmation there in 1995; thus, St. William will always have a tender place in my heart.

      Henry L. Harder

      October 8, 2012

      A Short History of The Catholic Church in Durant, Oklahoma

      A Treaty between the United States and the Indian Tribes in 1866 contained an agreement for one railroad to cross Indian Territory from east to west and one railroad to cross the Territory from north to south. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway Company’s north-south line from Parsons, Kansas crossed the northern border of Indian Territory on June 8, 1870. It reached the Arkansas River in the autumn of 1871, it crossed the Canadian River in the spring of 1872, and it was completed across the Red River into Texas on Christmas Day 1872. Occupation of the Durant town site began in November 1872 when a wheel-less boxcar was placed on the east side of the M-K-T (Katy) Railway tracks fifteen miles north of the Red River. In 1873 Dixon Durant erected the town’s first

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