John Augustus Tolton (baptized Augustine; April 1, 1854 – July 9, 1897) was an African American Catholic who served as the first Black Catholic priest in the United States, having been ordained in Rome in 1886. He was preceded by the Healy brothers, Catholic priests who passed as White.
Born into slavery in Missouri, Tolton and his family escaped in 1863 and settled in Quincy, Illinois. Despite being very well-educated, multilingual, and fully supported by local Irish- and German-American priests and by Bishop Peter Joseph Baltes, all of whom believed in his priestly vocation, Tolton was rejected by every American major seminary to which he applied, as well as by the Mill Hill Missionaries in London. Unmoved, the bishop arranged for his reception into the Pontifical Urban University in Rome, where Tolton was ordained in 1886. Originally expecting to serve as a missionary in Africa, Tolton was instead reassigned by Cardinal Giovanni Simeoni to the United States as a missionary to his fellow African Americans.
Assigned to the Diocese of Alton, Tolton first ministered at his home parish in Quincy, despite considerable opposition from both the German-American dean of the parish and local African-American Protestant ministers. Reassigned at his own request to the Archdiocese of Chicago, Tolton, in a highly important move for African-American Catholicism, spearheaded the development and construction of St. Monica's Church as an African-American "national parish" on Chicago's South Side.
With the assistance of philanthropist Katharine Drexel, St Monica's was completed in 1893 at 36th and Dearborn Streets. "Good Father Gus", as he was called by his parishioners, died unexpectedly at 43 of heatstroke during the 1897 Chicago heatwave. Tolton's cause for beatification was announced by Cardinal Francis George in 2010. Tolton was declared venerable by Pope Francis in June 2019.
Early life
Parents and birth Tolton's mother, Martha Jane Chisley, was the daughter of Augustus and Matilda (née Hurd) Chisley (d. 1836), and grew up as the slave of John Henry Manning in Meade County, Kentucky. Martha Jane Chisley was also a cradle Catholic who had grown up attending St. Theresa's Catholic Church in Rhodelia. After the death of Manning in 1835, the Chisley children were forcibly separated from their parents and divided up among his different heirs. Martha Jane Chisley was inherited by her owner's daughter, Ann or Susan (née Manning) Elliott, as part of a wedding dowry. Priest discovers Kentucky parish has ties to Father Augustus Tolton By Ruby Thomas, Catholic News Service, Monday, February 28, 2022.
Tolton was born illegitimately and in slavery on April 1, 1854 in Ralls County, Missouri or Brush Creek, Missouri to Martha Jane Chisley. He was baptized into the Catholic Church as "a slave child" owned by Stephen Elliott Duriga (2018), page 4. on May 29, 1854 at St. Peter's Catholic Church located in Rensselaer, near Hannibal, Missouri. His master's daughter, Savilla Elliott, was Tolton's godmother and taught her parents' slaves Catholic religion classes. Savilla Elliott's classes, however, did not extend beyond memorisation of the Ten Commandments, which Martha Jane Chisley often prayed by reciting them aloud at deeply emotional and fearful moments, but without understanding their meaning. Duriga (2018), page 3.
According to Joyce Duriga: "In 1859 -- five years after Augustus was born -- their respective owners gave Martha Jane and a man named Peter Paul permission to marry. Peter Paul was a fellow slave who worked on the neighboring Hagar plantation in the distillery. Given the years between Augustus' birth and the marriage, it is unlikely that Peter was Augustus' biological father but would have been the only father he knew. Later in life, Augustus never referred to Peter Paul as his father." Duriga (2018), page 4.
Freedom How the Tolton family gained their freedom remains a subject of debate. According to the Elliott family's descendants, Stephen Elliott freed all of his slaves at the outbreak of the American Civil War and allowed them to move North. Their estate papers, however, tell a very different story.
In July 1863, Tolton's master, Stephen Elliott, died and left his estate considerably burdened by debt. In response, his widow, Ann Elliott, ordered all their property appraised, including the slaves. Martha was appraised at $59, her eldest son Charles at $100, her daughter Ann at $75, and youngest son Augustus at $25. Duriga (2018), pages 1-2.
Tolton's stepfather Peter Paul Hagar escaped from slavery first. According to United States military records, he enlisted on September 20, 1863 in the 3rd Arkansas Infantry Regiment of Colored Troops at Hannibal, Missouri as "Peter Paul Lefevre", a nome de guerre derived from the surname of the priest who had baptized him. Duriga (2018), page 4. He was intending to fight in the Union Army during the American Civil War, but Peter died of dysentery on January 12, 1864 in a military hospital in Helena, Arkansas.
According to the Elliott estate papers, at sometime between July and September 1863 Martha Jane Chisley and her children went missing. In response, Ann Elliot hired slave catchers with a $10 down payment to apprehend the Chisley family under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In his later lectures and in print, Tolton alleged that Ann Elliott promised a bounty of $600 for the recapture of his whole family, dead or alive. Duriga (2018), pages 1-2.
At the time, Union Army Regiments assigned to Missouri and other border States were under strict orders not to interfere with slavery as long as individual masters took an oath of loyalty to the Union. However, as the case of the 38 "Liberators" from the 9th Minnesota Infantry Regiment, whose November 1863 train robbery at Otterville, Missouri successfully rescued a runaway slave's wife and children from being sold out of the State demonstrates, Union soldiers, even at the risk of court-martial, routinely ignored these orders and defied them outright. John B. Lundstone (2012), One Drop in a Sea of Blue: The Liberators of the Ninth Minnesota, Minnesota Historical Society Press. pp. 7-95.
This is why, after making it to Hannibal on foot, Martha and her children were protected from efforts to arrest them by the local Union Army garrison. After Union soldiers in Hannibal provided Martha and her children with a rowboat, she successfully rowed her family one mile across the Mississippi River Duriga (2018), pages 2-4. and into the Free State of Illinois.
Education and seminary After settling in the shanty town known as "The Negro Quarter" in Quincy, Illinois, which then included an estimated 300 fellow Free Negroes, Duriga (2018), pages 5-6. Martha, Augustus, and Charley began working at the Harris Tobacco Company, where they made cigars.
Martha enrolled her son in a local segregated public school named after Abraham Lincoln, where Tolton was placed in a class with much younger children and is believed to have been bullied by the older students. Duriga (2018), page 6. His first attempt to enter Catholic school, at St. Boniface downtown, was met with racist opposition, and he withdrew within a month.
After Charley's death at the age of ten, Tolton met Peter McGirr, a Catholic priest from Fintona, County Tyrone who had grown up in a nearby Irish-American farming community. McGirr took Tolton under his wing and arranged for him to attend St. Lawrence's (later known as St. Peter's) Catholic School during the winter months when the tobacco factory was closed. The priest's decision was controversial in the parish. Despite being treated well by the priests and the nuns, many of McGirr's parishioners objected to a Black student attending their children's school. McGirr held fast and allowed Tolton to continue studying there. Tolton received his First Communion and confirmation from Bishop Peter Joseph Baltes of the Diocese of Alton at St. Peter's Church on June 12, 1870, which is when the Chisley family's first use of their new surname Tolton appears in existing records. Even though runaway slaves routinely adopted new surnames to protect themselves from possible recapture, exactly why the Chisley family selected the last name Tolton remains unknown. Duriga (2018), page 7. Tolton graduated from St. Peter's school in 1872.
In 1874, a 20-year old Tolton was recruited to assist two local German-American priests in an effort to found a tuition free Catholic school for the children of Quincy's Black community. The school became so popular that the School Sisters of Notre Dame sent a professed nun and a postulant from Milwaukee to help teach at the school. One of the Sisters wrote at the time, "The older pupils studied the Catechism so diligently that the Holy Sacraments could be administered to them -- surely the new school's sweetest and most beneficial fruit..." Duriga (2018), page 9.
Even though African-American Baptist and Methodist ministers objected after seven students were baptized into the Catholic Church during the first year and succeeded by 1880 in forcing the Diocese to close the school down, Duriga (2018), page 9-10. Tolton always recalled this time in his life fondly. He later wrote, "I was a poor slave boy but the priests of the Church did not disdain me ... It was through one of them that I stand before you this day ... it was through the direction of a Sister of Notre Dame, Sister Herlinda, that I learned to interpret the Ten Commandments, and then I saw for the first time the glimmering light of truth and the majesty of the Church." Duriga (2018), page 9.
In 1875, Tolton briefly returned to his native Missouri, then rid of slavery after the Civil War.
While still teaching his fellow African Americans at the Catholic school, Tolton gained admission into St. Francis Solanus College (now Quincy University), which he attended from 1878-1880. No evidence now survives that he was required to pay tuition. At first, White students from Missouri threatened to leave the college if Tolton stayed, but the Franciscan Order replied that the Church would not discriminate based on skin color and the White students were free to leave if they wished. In 1880, Tolton graduated as the valedictorian of his class. Duriga (2018), page 10.
According to the Chicago Journal of History, Bishop Balthes reportedly instructed McGirr, "Find a seminary which will accept a Negro candidate. The Diocese will assume the expense." Duriga (2018), pages 10-11. In his own letters to seminaries, Bishop Balthes repeatedly praised Tolton as, "more than ordinary." Duriga (2018), page 12.
Despite the bishop and McGirr's best efforts, Tolton was rejected by every American seminary to which he applied. Meanwhile, diocesan priests continue to tutor Tolton in Ecclesiastical Latin, Koine Greek, German, ancient and modern history, philosophy, and geography. Duriga (2018), page 10.