Mazzuchelli, Samuel Charles [key], 1806–64, Italian missionary in America. He was a Dominican. He was ordered (1830) to the island of Mackinac to be the only permanent priest in the upper Great Lakes region. He founded the first Catholic school in Wisconsin at Green Bay and visited various Native American tribes as a missionary. About 1835 he moved to Galena, Ill.; he established churches in Galena, Dubuque, Davenport, Potosi, Burlington, Iowa City, Bloomington, Bellevue, Shullsburg, Sinsinawa, and other places. He founded a college for men at Sinsinawa and for three years was its first president. He excelled in music, painting, and architecture and designed all his churches and several lay buildings. He probably drew plans for the first statehouse of Iowa, now the administration building of the state university.
See his memoirs (tr. 1915); biography by M. E. Evans (1950).
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