Basilika St. Anna (Detroit)
Ste. Anne de Detroit Catholic Church is a Roman Catholic parish located in Detroit, Michigan. It is the second oldest continuously operating parish in the United States (after St. Augustine) and has occupied 8 different buildings. It is named by the early French settlers after Ste. Anne, mother of Mary and the grandmother of Jesus, patron of France and Quebec where the settlers originated and on whose feast day it was founded.
Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac and his men arrived at Detroit in 25 canoes. They began building the Fort Pontchartrain with construction of Ste. Anne's church begun on her feast day, July 26, 1701, within 48 hours of landing. It became the first building built in Detroit. Nicholas Constantine del Halle, a Fransciscan, and Francois Vaillant, a Jesuit, were the two priests who accompanied the group. Vaillant returned east in the fall.
A fire in 1703 (blamed by settlers on the local Native Americans) destroyed part of the fort including the church, the rectory and the baptismal records. A new church building was built in 1704 and the oldest surviving church records date to this time with the first record on February 2, 1704 being the baptism of a child born to Cadillac.
Father del Halle was kidnapped by Native Americans and after his release as he walked back to the fort was shot and killed by an Indian. His remains were buried under the altar and have been moved 4 times to new church buildings since.
Father Cherubin Deniau began work on a larger church in 1708. This church was outside the palisade and was burned 4 years later in 1712 by the settlers during a Native American attack as they feared it would offer cover to the attackers.
The parish did not have a church building for many years after this although one might have been built by Father Bonaventure Lienard, who was priest there between 1722-1754. Father Simple Bocquet began a new church building in 1755, within a year after he arrived. Bocquet stayed nearly 30 years during which time Detroit passed from French to British ownership and then to American. An Anglican wedding is even recorded in the Catholic church records during this period.
Father Gabriel Richard arrived at Ste. Anne's in 1796. While the local priest, he helped start the school which evolved in to the University of Michigan, started primary schools for white boys and girls and Indians, as a territorial representative to U.S. Congress helped establish a road-building project that connected Detroit and Chicago, and brought the first printing press to Michigan which printed the first Michigan newspaper. After his death in 1832, Richard was interred under the altar of Ste. Anne's.
In 1805, most of Detroit including the church was destroyed in an accidental fire. A new building was not begun until 1818 and was not completed until 1828. This church was at a new location outside the grounds of the old fort and was designed by Leon Coquard, a parishioner. Between 1833 and 1844, Ste. Anne's was designated as the cathedral church of the entire Northwest Territory (until replaced by a new Detroit church, Saints Peter and Paul Church).
In 1886 the church building was demolished with the furnishings and even the cornerstone split between the new Ste. Anne's and the new parish of St. Joachim, named after Ste. Anne's husband. The 1818 church altar and Richard's remains are installed in a side chapel. Other pieces of the 1818 church installed in the 1886 one include the communion rail, statue of Ste. Anne and the church bell. The 1886 Ste. Anne's is a Neo-Gothic building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Both parishes continued French traditions. Increased immigration and housing changes made Ste. Anne's into a primarily Irish parish by the 1920s, and soon thereafter an Italian one. The first sermon in Spanish was given in 1940; the last sermon in French in 1942. A Spanish speaking priest was assigned in 1946. As of 2004, the parish is Hispanic.