Augustus Tolton

Tolton's mother, Martha Jane Chisley, was the daughter of Augustus and Matilda (née Hurd) Chisley (d. 1836), and grew up as the slave of John Henry Manning in Meade County, Kentucky.[3] Martha Jane Chisley was also a cradle Catholic who had grown up attending St. Theresa's Catholic Church in Rhodelia. After the death of Manning in 1835, the Chisley children were forcibly separated from their parents and divided up among his different heirs. Martha Jane Chisley was inherited by her owner's daughter, Ann or Susan (née Manning) Elliott, as part of a wedding dowry.[1][2][3][4]

Tolton was born in slavery on April 1, 1854 in Ralls County, Missouri[5] or Brush Creek, Missouri[3] to Peter Paul and Martha Jane (née Chisley) Tolton. He was baptized into the Catholic Church as Augustine Tolton on May 29, 1854 at St. Peter's Catholic Church located in the small community of Rensselaer, located near Hannibal, Missouri.[3] His master was Stephen Elliott. His daughter,[3] Savilla Elliott, was Tolton's godmother and gave the children Catholic classes.[3]

How the Tolton family gained their freedom remains a subject of debate. According to accounts that Tolton told friends and parishioners, his father escaped first and enlisted on September 20, 1863 in a regiment of Colored Troops in the Union Army during the American Civil War.[3][6] Tolton's mother later ran away as well with their children Samuel, Charley, Augustine, and Anne.[6] With the assistance of sympathetic Union soldiers and police, they successfully crossed the Mississippi River, and into the Free State of Illinois.[7][3] According to the Elliott descendants, Stephen Elliott freed all of his slaves at the outbreak of the American Civil War and allowed them to move North.[6] Augustine's father died of dysentery on January 12, 1864 in a military hospital in Helena, Arkansas before the war ended.[3][6][7]

After arriving in Quincy, Illinois, Martha, Augustus, and Charley began working at the Herris Tobacco Company, where they made cigars.[6] His first attempt to enter Catholic school, at St. Boniface downtown, was met with racist opposition, and he withdrew within a month.[3] After Charley's death at the age of ten,[3] Augustine met Peter McGirr, an Irish Catholic priest from Fintona, County Tyrone.[3][6] The latter allowed him to attend St. Lawrence's (later known as St. Peter's) Catholic School during the winter months when the tobacco factory was closed.[3] The priest's decision was controversial in the parish. Although abolitionists were active in the town, many of McGirr's parishioners objected to a Black student at their children's school. McGirr held fast and allowed Tolton to study there. Tolton graduated from St. Peter's in 1872.[3]

Later, Tolton continued studies directly with some priests, at one point even returning to his native Missouri, then rid of slavery after the Civil War. Making little progress toward the priesthood, Tolton then returned to Quincy and gained admission into St. Francis Solanus College (now Quincy University)—run by the Franciscans, who had previously been the first to reject his application for seminary.[8]

Despite McGirr's support, Tolton was rejected by every American seminary to which he applied.[1][6] Impressed by his personal qualities, McGirr continued to help him and enabled Tolton to study in Rome. He graduated from college and thereafter attended the Pontifical Urban University, where he became fluent in the Italian language as well as studying Ecclesiastical Latin and Koine Greek.[3]

Tolton in 1887[9]

Tolton received his First Communion and confirmation at St. Peter's on June 12, 1870.[3]

Tolton was ordained to the priesthood in Rome on April 24, 1886 at age 31.[7][10] His first public Mass was inside St. Peter's Basilica on Easter Sunday, 1886.[6] Expecting to serve in an African mission, he studied its regional cultures and languages.[6] Instead, he was directed to return to the United States to serve the Black community. Tolton celebrated his first Mass in the United States at St. Mary's Hospital in Hoboken, New Jersey on July 7, 1886. He celebrated a Solemn Mass at St. Benedict the Moor Catholic Church in New York City on July 11.

His first Mass in Quincy was at St. Boniface. He attempted to organize a parish there, but over the years, met with resistance from both white Catholics (many of whom were ethnic Germans) and Protestant African American ministers, who did not want him trying to attract people to another denomination.[6] He organized St. Joseph Catholic Church and school in Quincy but ran into opposition from the new dean of the parish, who wanted him to turn away white worshipers from his services.[1][3][6]

After reassignment to Chicago, Tolton led a mission society, St. Augustine's, which met in the basement of St. Mary's Church. He led the development and administration of the Negro "national parish" of St. Monica's Catholic Church, built at 36th and Dearborn Streets on the South Side. The church nave seated 850 parishioners[11] and was built with money from philanthropists Mrs. Anne O'Neill[12] and Katharine Drexel.[13]

St. Monica's Parish grew from 30 parishioners to 600 with the construction of the new church building.[14] Tolton's success at ministering to Black Catholics quickly earned him national attention within the Catholic hierarchy.[7][15] "Good Father Gus," as he was called by many, was known for his "eloquent sermons, his beautiful singing voice, and his talent for playing the accordion."[7]

Several contemporaneous news articles describe his personal qualities and importance. An 1893 article in the Lewiston Daily Sun, written while he worked to establish St. Monica's for African American Catholics in Chicago, said, "Father Tolton ... is a fluent and graceful talker and has a singing voice of exceptional sweetness, which shows to good advantage in the chants of the high mass. It is no unusual thing for many white people to be seen among his congregation."[11]

Among Chicago’s Catholics, Tolton found a warm welcome from the Jesuits of Holy Family Church and St. Ignatius College (now St. Ignatius College Prep). They invited him to stay in the Jesuit residence in the 1869 school building and to preach at the High Mass at Holy Family on January 29, 1893. Holy Family was then the largest English-speaking parish in Chicago, composed primarily of Irish immigrants and their children who were also struggling to establish a home in the sometimes unwelcoming city. Tolton appealed “at all the masses” and collected $500 ($14,000 in 2020) for St. Monica Church, which was dedicated on January 14, 1894.[16][17][18][19] The True Witness and Catholic Chronicle in 1894 described him as "indefatigable" in his efforts to establish the new parish.[20]

Daniel Rudd, who organized the initial Colored Catholic Congress in 1889, was quoted in the November 8, 1888, edition of The Irish Canadian as commenting about the Congress by saying:

"For a long time the idea prevailed that the negro was not wanted beyond the altar rail, and for that reason, no doubt, hundreds of young colored men who would otherwise be officiating at the altar rail today have entered other walks. Now that this mistaken idea has been dispelled by the advent of one full-blooded negro priest, the Rev. Augustus Tolton, many more have entered the seminaries in this country and Europe."[21]

Tolton would go on to say Mass at the Congress itself, held in Washington, D.C.[2][22]

Another indication of the prominence given Tolton by parts of the American Catholic hierarchy was his participation, a few months later, on the altar at an international celebration of the centenary of the establishment of the first U.S. Catholic diocese in Baltimore. Writing about it in the New York Times edition of November 11, 1889, the correspondent noted that "As Cardinal Gibbons retired to his dais [on the altar at the Mass], the reporters in the improvised press gallery noticed for the first time, not six feet away from him in the sanctuary among the abbots and other special dignitaries, the Black face of Father Tolton of Chicago, the first African American Catholic priest ordained in America."[15][23]

Tolton's grave in Quincy, Illinois

Tolton began to be plagued by "spells of illness" in 1893.[7] Because of them, he was forced to take a temporary leave of absence from his duties at St. Monica's Parish in 1895.[14]

At the age of 43, on July 8, 1897,[24] he collapsed and died the following day at Mercy Hospital as a result of the heat wave in Chicago in 1897.[7] After a funeral which included 100 priests,[12] Tolton was buried in the priests' lot in St. Peter's Cemetery in Quincy, which had been his expressed wish.[6]

After Tolton's death, St. Monica's was made a mission of St. Elizabeth's Church. In 1924 it was closed as a national parish, as Black Catholics chose to attend parish churches in their neighborhoods.