by Roz Young
Father Caillet wrote to Archbishop Purcell that, keeping in mind that Purcell had asked to have Leo Meyer replaced by another Marianist priest, he had decided the time had come to make the change. Meyer, he said, felt that he was unappreciated in Dayton, and that a German bishop in Milwaukee would like to have Meyer in his diocese.
"But the big obstacle to this change," he continued, "is the property where he lives near Dayton, which he bought inconsiderately and without consulting us. He cannot pay the price and does not know how to raise funds and face his creditor. I should not care to have the priest who is to replace him faced with enormous debts without the means to meet them on his arrival in Cincinnati."
He said that he was instructing Father Meyer in writing "to resell his domain and pay his creditor. Then, having paid all his debts, he could go and render service to the above-mentioned German bishop, taking with him some good subjects he has in Dayton, letting others go and leaving the teaching brothers in Cincinnati. ... Let me add, God helping, I shall send one or two good subjects who could open a novitiate in your episcopal city. I will not tell him, however, that this good subject is a degreed man and his successor."
Meyer was surprised that Caillet had written to Purcell that he had bought the farm without permission. (Purcell had given permission to Meyer to make the purchase.) "Ordinarily the defects of children are hidden; it seems that Divine Providence had furnished me with this trial, which evidently is not the last," he wrote. "Soon the report (will spread) in Cincinnati and Dayton that the convent of the brothers is to be suppressed, and that Mr. Stuart will come back to retake his farm and that we could not pay for it, etc."
Meyer wrote to the archbishop that the superior general's order to sell the farm was only conditional and that he did not intend to give it up. He had, in fact, just made the March payment due Mr. Stuart.
More trouble was in store for Father Meyer. The archbishop, while visiting Father Juncker in Dayton, asked Meyer to come to the parsonage. Meyer described what happened in a letter to his confidant in Strasbourg. An elderly woman had come through the snow to go to confession. He tried to get her to return to town, but she refused. Meyer had been warned by the archbishop to hear no confessions except those of the people living at Nazareth, but when she insisted, since there was no confessional in the chapel, he placed a prie-dieu near the altar, put himself near the altar and heard her confession.
He confessed what he had done to Father Juncker, who told him that her confession was null and invalid since there was no confessional in the chapel and that he must go to her and tell her she would have to repeat her confession. This he did. Meyer then told the archbishop that he was unaware there was an ordinance about invalid confessions where there was no confessional, and added that Father Juncker had confessed women in his room when Meyer was living with him. Both Juncker and Purcell "fell upon me in good style."
Father Juncker accused Meyer of working with some members of the parish who were against him. "I defy anyone to prove that at any time I criticized Father Juncker's conduct," he wrote hotly to the archbishop. To his confidant in France, Father Chevaux, he wrote that Juncker discouraged young men from joining the Society and even went to parents of pupils at Nazareth to point out other schools they could attend. Priests in Cincinnati did the same. "Our good brothers cannot get over it," he wrote, "as they could never imagine anyone could encounter obstacles just where one would have a right to expect assistance."
The school had not been very successful at first. The brothers all spoke German to one another, and the idea spread that the school was only for boys of German descent. It was difficult to get German boys to continue their education after the First Communion. Furthermore, some people believed that the school, named for St. Mary, ought to be a girls' school. Since admission was only for Catholic boys, the enrollment suffered because the native and wealthier population of Dayton was non-Catholic.
In September 1851, the number of boarders in the school fell to only four, and the day students numbered only six. By May1852, the enrollment increased, however, to nine boarders and 15 day students.
During the summer of 1852, Meyer made plans to build an addition to the Stuart mansion to accommodate the growth in the religious family and the number of boarders. Prospects for the harvest in 1852 were good, and Meyer pointed out the increase in the value of their land was substantial. A home not worth as much as the Stuart mansion, together with 25 acres of land, a mile beyond Nazareth sold for $9,000. The Nazareth property had doubled in value because of their improvements and the growth of the city.
Meyer planned to sell the land between Brown Street and the Lebanon Pike (Main Street) in 1853, but he was dissuaded from doing so by a priest skilled in financial matters, who told him the property would be worth $60,000 in 10 years.
At the beginning of 1853 there were more than 30 day students and 28 boarders in the school. "The house is as full as an egg," Meyer said.
Ground was broken for a two-story addition to the Stuart mansion in spring of 1854 and was under roof by September. The chapel was moved to the first floor of the addition and was blessed Oct. 1, 1854, the Feast of Our Lady of Victory.
The new addition cost upwards of $2,000. It was all paid for and Meyer had an account of $336. The archbishop wanted to know where Meyer found the money. "Your Grace," answered Meyer, "I have an account with St. Joseph."
Roz Young is a columnist, author, historian and lifelong Dayton-area resident. Address: Dayton Daily News, P.O. Box 1287, Dayton, Ohio 45402. Phone messages can be left at 225-2289.