FREMIN
271
FRENCH
orphanages for boys, situated in the country, 9 orphan-
ages for girls, 6 workhouses, 2 houses of rescue, 3
houses of charity for the assistance of the poor, 30
hospitals or hospices, 2 houses of retreat, 7 religious
houses for the care of the sick in their homes.
Gallia Christiana. Nova (1715), I, 11 v 117, 7::n 762; In- slrumenta, 82-85, 129-131; Albanes. '/ ' * ' ' ,i,ii novis- sima (Montbdiiard, 1899); Duchesni;, / / <:>!>aux, I,
269-276; EsriTALlEH. Lcs cvcqucs dc Fr. , I m i . iK,ri, 1891- 1898); I,\Miir'nT, 11r-lmre de Toulon (Toul,,,,, l v, ■ ; Disdieb, De^crii'i ' ' ' 'lu diocese dc /'/< • ' tfianus-
crils d' < : W^/c/my (Dragiiii^i I I i-. : Ih.ieiret,
Sanctii'iw ii!,,-i , niodemes de la Tr, ■■■■., / ', 1 - ,/i(lans lcs diocisrs </.. //.jM,, .( de Toulon (Toulun, Ivdl,, tutvALlER, Topo-bibl., 124U, 3125.
Georges Goyau.
Fremin, Ja.mes, Jesuit missionary to the American Indians; b. at Reims, 12 March, 162S; d. at Quebec, 2 July, 1691. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1646 and in 1655 set out for the Onondaga mission in Can- ada to devote the rest of his life to the evangelization of the savages. At the invitation of a Cayuga chief- tain he set out, in 1666, for Lake Tiohero, near the present Cayuga, but his stay there was of short dura- tion. The next year he was sent to revive the mission founded by Father Jogues among the Mohawk and, on his way, instituted the first Catholic settlement in Vermont, on Isle La Motte. Arriving at Tinnonto- guen, the Mohawk capital, he rapidly acquired the language and by his courage and kindness won the respect of his savage cliarges. Unfortunately, the Mohawk did not readily respond to his efforts, and his chief care seems to have been to attend to the Huron captives who were already Christianized.
In October, 1608, Father Fremin proceeded to the Seneca country, but the war then being waged with the Ottawa and the Susquehanna prevented many conversions. In August, 16C9, he left for Onondaga to preside at a general meeting of the missionary priests, but shortly returned to Gannougar^ to resume his work among the captive Huron. The high repute he had gained among the various tribes was responsi- ble for his recall, in 1670, to take charge of La Prairie, the Christian settlement near Montreal where the con- verted Indians had been gathered, and it was he who placed this refuge on a solid footing and eliminated the liquor traffic. From that time on, with the ex- ception of several voyages to France in the interest of the mission, he devot«d himself exclusively to the work of preserving in the Faith those Indians who had been baptized, and, despite the persistent efforts of the tribes from which the converts came, he was able to prevent any serious defection. He died worn out by his long apostolate, having been the means of bringing over ten thousand Indians into the Church.
Campbell. Pioneer Priests of North America (New York, 1908); Jesuit Relations: Holmes in Handbook of American In- dians, s. V. Caughnawaga (Washington, 1907).
Stanley J. Qdinn.
French, Nicholas, Bishop of Ferns, Ireland, b. at Ballytory, Co. Wexford, in 1604, his parents being John French and Christina Rosseter; d. at Ghent, 23 Aug., 1678. He studied at Louvain and appears to have been president of one of the colleges there, and on his return to Ireland in 1640 he was appointed parish priest of Wexford. During the Confederation War in Ireland he joined the Confederate party and took an active part in the deliberations of the Kil- kenny Assembly. He was appointed Bishop of Ferns and was consecrated in November, 1645. Though opposed to the party of Preston he favoured the peace of 1648 against the Nuncio Rinuccini, but in the synod at Jamestown in le.'iO, he bitterly opposed the Or- mond faction. In 1651 he went on a deputation to the Duke of Lorraine to solicit his assistance against Cromwell, and to offer him the protectorship of Ire- land, but this mission having proved a failure he re- mained on the Continent. It is not clear whether it
was at this particular period or later that he officiated
for a while as coadjutor Bishop of Paris. He retired
to Santiago in Spain, where he assisted the Arch-
bishop of Santiago, and where he wrote his book,
" Lucubrations of the Bishop of Ferns in Spain ". At
the Restoration period he was about to return to Ire-
land, but being greatly disliked by Ormond on ac-
count of his attitude at the conference at Jamestown,
the permission that had been given was withdrawn,
and he remained in different parts of the Continent,
notably at Paris and Ghent. During this portion of
his life he published many pamphlets on Irish affairs,
which are extremely valuable for the elucidation of
the history from the outbreak of the war till 1675. In
his last years he appears to have officiated as assistant
to the Bishop of Ghent, and in that city he died, aged
seventy-three years. There, too, a magnificent mon-
ument was raised to his memory.
He was a man of great literary activity as is evident from his numerous works. Besides a course of philos- ophy still in manuscript in March's Library, Dublin, he published "Queeres propound by the Protestant Party in Ireland concerning the peace now treated of in Ireland" (Paris, 1644); "A Narrative of Claren- don's Sale and Settlement of Ireland, etc." (Louvain, 1668); "The Bleeding Iphigenia" (1674), and "The Unkind Deserter of Loyal men and true friends", i. e. Ormond (Paris, 1676). An edition of his works was prepared by Samuel H. Bindon and was published at Dublin, in 1846.
Brady, Episcopal Succession (Rome, 1867); Ware-Hariiis, Antiquities of Ireland (Dublin, 1739-43); Rinuccini's Embassy in Ireland, ed. Hutton (Dublin, 1873); Clarendon, History of Irish Rebellion of 161,1 (Dublin, 1719); Gilbert, History of Irish Confederation (Dublin, 1882-1891).
James MacCapfrey.
French Cathohcs in the United States. — The
first Bishop of Burlington, the Right Reverend Louis de Goesbriand, in a letter dated 11 May, 1869, and which appeared in "Le Protecteur Canadien", a French newspaper then published at St. Albans, Ver- mont, made the following statement: "I am con- vinced from positive information, that when we say that there are 500,000 French-Canadians in the United States, the figures are far below the truth." The sources from which the late prelate drew his in- formation are unknown to the writers of this article, but it is a fact that to-day the Diocese of Burlington has a Catholic population of 76,000 souls, of which 50,000 at least are of French Canadian birth or origin. It is also a fact that the French Canadian element has increased, both naturally and by immigration, to such an extent that it now numbers nearly 1,200,000 souls in the United States, that it has made its influence felt throughout the Eastern States, in all walks of life, and furthermore that, in point of numbers, it is the predominant element in several dioceses, and an important part of the population in many others. However, except in their own newspapers, or a few little-known books, scarcely anything had been said of the part taken by these immigrants in the civil and reli- gious fife of their new country, untU, very recently, they took into their own hands the task of reviewing their history, of gathering statistics of their numbers, and of recording their achievements and the progress they have made in fifty years. The task is still far from complete, but enough has been done to demon- strate the progress of the French Canadians and their devotion to their Church and to their adopted coun- try.
The immigration of French Canadians to the United States began before the War of American In- dependence (1775-83). French Canadians had then already immigrated to New England, and we find them in large numbers in the armies of Washington. After the war the American Congress, in recognition of their services and to prevent their being prosecuted
