Organization

Jesuits founded and staffed colleges, high schools, middle schools, parishes, retreat houses, and universities throughout the midwestern United States. They continue to serve in many of those early foundations such as St. Ignatius High School, Saint Louis University, University of Detroit Mercy, Holy Rosary Mission-Red Cloud Indian School, Loyola Parish, and Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House, as well as works begun more recently such as Cristo Rey Jesuit High School and Nativity Jesuit Middle School.

The Midwest Jesuit Archives is separated into five major collections: Chicago, Detroit, Jesuit Conference, Missouri, and Wisconsin. Each collection consists of biographical records, personal papers, manuscripts, photographs, records of Jesuit institutions, periodicals and books authored by Jesuits, as well as works about American religious history and the Society of Jesus. The archives also houses artifacts and memorabilia of individual Jesuits and Jesuit institutions. In addition, the archives maintains special collections, including:

The Belize Collection
American Jesuits have been serving the people of the Central American county of Belize since 1893. Historical papers pertaining to their presence and ministries are in this collection.

The Daniel A. Lord Collection
The papers of the energetic Jesuit Daniel A. Lord (1888-1955) capture the exuberant spirit of Roman Catholicism in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s.

The De Smetiana Collection
In the 1840s, Jesuits established missions to Native Americans in the Northwestern and Midwestern United States. The De Smetiana Collection contains sixteen bound letter press books of the correspondence of missionary Jesuit Peter John De Smet (1801-1873), his scrapbook, over one hundred drawings by Jesuit Nicolas Point (1799-1868) that depict Native Americans and their lifestyle, and forty of the earliest maps of the Northwest region, hand-drawn by De Smet and his contemporaries. Some of the earliest sketches of the Yellowstone area are found in this collection.

The Native American Collection
Church records, diaries, and personal correspondence document Jesuits’ missionary activities among the Native Americans of the Midwestern and Northwestern United States. The archives likewise preserves dictionaries and grammars of the Potawatomi and Osage peoples. The Native American Collection is among the most-consulted in the archives.

The Photograph Collection

The Photograph Collection provides an amazingly clear view into American history. The photographs of Jesuit Charles M. Charroppin (1840-1915) document early St. Louis history, explore some of the earliest days of astro-photography, and tell a pictorial story of the Jesuits’ St. Stanislaus Seminary in Florissant, Missouri, during the 1870s and 1880s.