Machebeuf, Joseph Projectus [key], 1812–89, French missionary in the American Southwest, a Roman Catholic priest. He was a friend and associate of Jean Baptiste Lamy, coming with him to Ohio in 1839 and accompanying him to New Mexico in 1850. He did much missionary work, establishing churches, schools, and hospitals in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. He was made bishop of Denver in 1887. Father Machebeuf is the Father Vaillant of Willa Cather's novel Death Comes for the Archbishop.
See biography by W. J. Howlett (1908).
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