Jesuits in the USA

JESUIT INSTITUTIONS
IN
THE UNITED STATES

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1939, a Let's Get Associated poster stamp
featuring the Mission of the Sacred Heart, at Cataldo, Idaho, built by Fr. Ravalli, the oldest standing building in Idaho.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1990, special cancel for the centennial of the State of Idaho

In the early 1840s, at the invitation of the Coeur d'Alene Indians, Jesuit missionaries came to North Idaho. An earlier church 35 miles south of the present site was destroyed by flood in 1846. The Italian Jesuit Father Anthony Ravalli came in 1848 and he and two brothers built the "old mission" church, the oldest building in Idaho, at a new site, 25 miles east of the modern Coeur d'Alene. The town was later named Cataldo, after Father Joseph M. Cataldo, who arrived in 1877 and made his headquarters here when he was made superior of all the Rocky Mountain Missions. In 1887, the mission itself was moved to DeSmet, Idaho.

Let's Get Associated poster stamps were put out by the Associated Oil Company, featuring tourist spots all over the US. Customers collected these stamps from gas stations and pasted them into a book holding 100 stamps. Book Two, Roads to Romance Stamps of the West (1939) included Cataldo, Idaho (#139).

Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana

In 1924, the EKKO Company of Chicago published an album to hold "Verified Reception Stamps" from radio stations all over the United States, Mexico, Cuba and Canada. It had space for 650 stamps beautifully engraved by the American Bank Note Company. In 1925 the PM Bryant Company, also based in Chicago, decided to compete with EKKO and began issuing its own stamps and album. They issued at least two different albums and just under 600 different stamps, but these were of poorer quality and printing ended by 1930.

Station WWL is owned the Jesuit-run Loyola University in New Orleans. The Gulf South's first AM radio broadcast was transmitted from a physics lab at Loyola in 1922. WWL-AM radio joined the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1935, and until 1989 was owned by the university.

Station WHAD belonged to Marquette University, the Jesuit university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The station began in 1921 as a 100-watt station, with a 70-foot high tower. By 1925, the station was generating 500 watts. In 1934 the Wisconsin News purchased WHAD from Marquette University, and shut it down allowing the News' own station WISN to broadcast seven days a week.

Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1938, a Let's Get Associated poster stamp
featuring the Santa Clara Mission on the grounds of Santa Clara University

The first sight that greets visitors to Santa Clara University is the facade of the restored church of Mission Santa Clara de Asís. Santa Clara University, the oldest college in California, is also the only college in the state to be the successor of a Spanish mission. The mission, dating back to 1777, was the first outpost of Spanish civilization in the Santa Clara Valley. The university, founded in 1851, was born amid the tumultuous growth of the Gold Rush era. The mission moved its location over the years before coming to its fifth and present site, and the building has been restored and rebuilt a number of times, the final "remodeling" of the fifth Mission Church occurring on Oct. 24, 1926.

The missions in California passed gradually from Franciscan to diocesan control, Mission Santa Clara being secularized on December 27, 1836. With the coming of the Gold Rush in 1849, San José's population grew rapidly and there was far greater need for both religious and educational institutions in the Santa Clara Valley than Mission Santa Clara seemed able to supply. So in December of 1850 the new bishop of California, the Dominican Joseph Sadoc Alemany, offered the decrepit buildings of Mission Santa Clara to John Nobili, S.J., who had been attempting to open a school, and on March 4, 1851, Bishop Alemany appointed Nobili pastor of Mission Santa Clara. Two months later Santa Clara College, the first in the State of California began instructing students.

Georgetown University, Washington DC

Wheeling Jesuit University (then Wheeling College) was founded in partnership between the Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and the Society of Jesus of the Maryland Province in 1954. Wheeling Jesuit, the youngest of the nation's 28 Jesuit institutions, incorporated on Sept. 25, 1954, and, staffed by 12 Jesuits and four lay professors, opened its doors to its first class on Sept. 26, 1955. It is the only Catholic institution of higher learning in West Virginia.