From tragedy to triumph

DE PERE – In 1671, Jesuit missionary Father Claude-Jean Allouez organized a mission at Rapides Des Pères — Rapids of the Fathers — on the shore of the Fox River where they worked to covert the area’s Native tribes.

Many native inhabitants were forced further west when European emigrants began to settle in the Green Bay area in what we now know as De Pere, as people of Dutch, Scottish and various other heritages began migrating to the newly established state of Wisconsin.

On Dec. 1, 1849, a group of Scottish emigrants of Presbyterian religion met at the corner of George and Wisconsin Streets on the second floor of the 10-year-old Brown County Courthouse — the only public building in what was then the county seat — in what still considered a frontier village.

While missionaries visited the De Pere faithful, there was no church there until that group of pioneers organized themselves as the First Presbyterian Church and Society of De Pere.

Robert D. Stewart was the ruling elder for the Green Bay Presbyterian Church and had a nephew, John, who was set to graduate from the Princeton Seminary.

“Young John Stewart agreed to come immediately after his graduation from Princeton in 1849 only on condition that the new De Pere church be founded in league with the Old School Presbyterian Church. And so it was,” Jonathon Howes Webster wrote in 1974 in his history on the church.

“The young Rev. Stewart arrived in De Pere with his new bride in the fall of 1849 and began immediately to assemble the founding congregation.”

The church then instituted a Sunday morning and evening services, a Wednesday evening prayer service and Sunday Bible School program.

“Within a year, the resolution had been made to construct a church building. Land was acquired on what was to become Superior Street and a subscription campaign was launched to raise funds,” wrote Webster.

But the young pastor would not see the building come to fruition.

“In the first year in De Pere he had been caught in a blizzard while returning on horseback to his remote charge from a Presbytery meeting in far-off Portage,” Webster explained. “On the three-day trek home in mid-November he suffered terrible from exposure and died in the following month.

“For the next four years, they were served by supply pastors and missionaries sent out by the Board of Home Missions.”

In 1855, one year after the completion of opening of the new church building, Rev. L.C. Spofford was installed as pastor.

The pride that the congregation felt was fleeting, however.

In 1884, all that they had built was swept away when a fire ripped through De Pere in 1884.

But, from the ashes arose something bigger and stronger, when the trustees of the Congregational and Presbyterian church of De Pere met in August 1886 and drew up articles of agreement to merge the societies.

“The society will erect one large and beautiful edifice on the present site of the Congregational church. The union has been talked of for some time, but was hastened by the burning of the Presbyterian church,” a Press-Gazette article stated.

“The members all feel that it would be a good thing, as the two congregations united would be a great power for good in the community, and can pull together for the moral welfare of the place. The society will cut loose from old convention ties.”

“From this trial, a much larger and more splendid edifice was raised in 1887; the well-known church on the corner of Michigan and James Streets,” Webster stated.

The church building went on to serve the congregation until 1963, before the move to the First United Presbyterian Church’s current location on the corner of Webster Avenue and George Street.

The mighty facilities of today were constructed in stages, which included the reuse of the 1887 bell, a Christian Education Building in 1959 and a Family Life Center in 2007, to what you see now.

Today, 175 years later, the church maintains its dedication to “provide a community of faith which glorifies God through serving others, generosity and fellowship.”

The church will celebrate its 175th Jubilee during its Fall Festival on Sept. 21. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/First.United.Pres.