Gabriel Richard ( ; October 15, 1767 – September 13, 1832) was a French Roman Catholic priest who ministered to the French Catholics in the parish of Sainte Anne de Détroit, as well as Protestants and Native Americans living in Southeast Michigan. He established schools, a library, and vocational training with weaving looms. After Detroit was nearly destroyed by a fire in 1805, he and others created a new layout for the city. His motto following the fire, Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus ("We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes") is inscribed on the Seal of the City of Detroit.
Richard helped negotiate the Treaty of Fort Meigs. He was co-founder of the Catholepistemiad of Michigania (which would later be renamed the University of Michigan). He was the first Catholic priest elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as delegate of the Michigan Territory for the 18th Congress. The Fr. Gabriel Richard Guild was established in 2020 as one of the first steps towards canonization of Richard.
Early life
Born in La Ville de Saintes on October 15, 1767, Gabriel Richard was the third of six children born to François Richard and Marie Geneviève Bossuet. At age 11, Gabriel was ready to receive a formal education. He was admitted into the Collège in Saintes.
Gabriel Richard struggled at first but soon became one of the school's top scholars. His grades especially improved after an accident sidelined him for a period of time. The Collège was building a new chapel, and the building was surrounded with scaffolding. Even though the boys were forbidden to climb it, Gabriel Richard did. In descending, he stepped off into space. He received a “head wound and a heavy cut in the chin and mouth.” This accident left him with a jaw that had a slight twist to the left and a permanent scar.
He entered the seminary in Angers in 1784 and was ordained on October 15, 1790. He was a priest of the Society of Saint-Sulpice, an intellectual order. Expressing the value of receiving a good education, Richard wrote his father, "I esteem education a hundred times more than the succession you could leave us, for an accident can deprive us of all our possessions, but knowledge and good education remain with us forever."
During the French Revolution, which began in the spring of 1792, revolutionary militants demanded that priests declare their allegiance to the secular French Republic. Richard refused to swear the oath and on April 2, he sailed from Le Havre on the ship named Reine des Coeurs (Queen of Hearts) for the United States. More than 200 priests were killed by revolutionary forces four months later.
He emigrated to Baltimore, Maryland. He taught mathematics at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, until being assigned by Bishop Carroll to do missionary work to the Indians in the Northwest Territory. He was first stationed in what is now Kaskaskia, Illinois, and later in Detroit, Michigan.
Missionary
Richard arrived in Detroit on the Feast of Corpus Christi, which was on June 7, 1798, to be the assistant pastor at Basilica of Sainte Anne de Détroit (Sainte Anne's Church). Michael Levadoux was the pastor. Many of the people in Detroit, both Catholics and Protestants, were of France ethnicity. He acquired the name Le Bon Pere (the good father), regardless of their religion.
He traveled to distant communities. South of Detroit, he met with Catholics along Maumee Bay, and along the Raisin, Huron, Ecorse, and Rouge River areas. To the north, he ministered to those along the St. Clair and Black Rivers. And he visited Catholics along Anchor Bay, Swan Creek, L'Anse Creuse Bay on Lake St. Clair, and the Clinton River. He established the third oldest parish in Michigan along the Clinton River when he established a log chapel called St. Peter's of Mt. Clemens in 1799. The same year, he traveled north to visit the Odawa at L'Arbre Croche. Soon after, a smallpox epidemic spread through the Great Lakes region. More than one half of L'Arbre Croche settlement's residents died. The Odawa believed deaths were retributions, either because Richard's religion was evil or that the Great Spirit was angered by the possibility of the natives accepting Catholicism.
In 1801, Bishop Pierre Denaut arrived in Detroit from Quebec. He administered the Sacrament of Confirmation to 536 parishioners, of those all but 10 were of French heritage.