IN THE COUNTY OF WATERLOO                            31


co-operation each individual was left to shift for himself and to move haphazardly where a kind or unkind Providence led him.  In this way many, very many, moved into localities where there was neither church nor prospect of one, and were lost to the faith.  Had our people taken a leaf from the history of the Mennonites and the Amish, they might have founded many substantial Catholic settlements wherever there was good land and a healthy climate.
    Unfortunately this haphazard way of leaving the country continues to the present day, to the most serious loss of faith for very many of our church members.
    In 1862 Father Nicolas Sorg and Father Vasseur, both Jesuits, gave a rousing Mission at St. Agatha and other centres of the County.  Just before the Mission the church had been nicely decorated, and the Sanctuary walls embellished with a beautiful representation of the Resurrection of Our Lord

                                                                                                   

CHAPTER X.- SECTION 5. - THE REV.  E. FUNCKEN, C.R., CONTINUED.
- THE ORPHANAGE.


    Often the need of an orphanage had been keenly felt here.  There had been one in existence in Hamilton for quite a few years.  But that was far away, its management all English and it was too small to receive children when the occasion arose.  Yet the Hamilton Orphanage annually sent collectors for their institute through the County long after the St. Agatha Orphanage had been established.
    On one occasion a large number of orphans from one family-nine, it is said, were on hand, and no place to care for them.  In this dilemma Father E. Funcken did not know how to manage.  So he took the orphans himself.  At the time the old tavern of Mr. Tschirhart, a log building just below the church, was vacant.  The owner gave his consent to have the children housed in it.  This must have been in 1858 or 1859.  The pastor found several young and pious ladies willing to mother the little ones.
    The number of children increased gradually from year to year, as also did the number of nurses, who lived like Religious under the direction of Father Eugene.  Miss Margaret Dietrich was their Superioress.  Her father Nicolaus, who had already given two acres of land for the church site, also gave nine acres adjoining to Father Eugene on which the permanent orphange was built some years later (1868).
    The orphanage was now an accomplished fact.  But, provision had to be made for its permanency.  The girls. were not bound by vows.  Father Eugene had no desire to found a new Religious Order.  Having become acquainted with the School Sisters of Notre Dame of Milwaukee and Munich, in Germany, he applied to them for Sisters to manage the new institution.  After mature deliberation, Mother Caroline consented, and brought the first two Sisters, Joachim and Kunigundis, to St. Agatha.
    On their way hither the train had to run through a burning forest, was set on fire and completely burned up.  The Sisters lost evervthina except what they had on their persons.  At Detroit they were fitted out as well as could be done in a hurry by the Sisters of their Community already established there.  Arriving at Petersburg, there was no one to meet them, Father Eugene being then away from home.  Perchance, "Holy Marks," a peculiar character, who peddled books and devotional objects all over the Catholic settlements in a waggon, was at the depot with his old horse and offered to take the forlorn

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