Category Archives: American Catholic History

Tom and Noelle Crowe finds the hidden gems and compelling stories of Catholic Americans who have contributed to their nation by virtue of their faith over the past three centuries.

Potawatomi Trail of Death and Father Benjamin Petit

In 1836, the Potawatomi native Americans, many of whom were Catholic, were forced off their land in Indiana and force-marched to Kansas. Tom ... Read more

Padre Pio and US Servicemen

While Padre Pio was not American, as Tom and Noëlle Crowe tell us, he did have some interesting interactions with US servicemen during and ... Read more

Joyce Kilmer

Every student learns the poem "Trees" in school. But now Tom and Noëlle Crowe tell us the story of its author Joyce Kilmer Catholic convert who ... Read more

Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day famously asked not to be called a saint in her lifetime. Tom and Noëlle Crowe tell us this Catholic champion of the rights and ... Read more

Irene Dunne

Irene Dunne was one of the most successful and famous actresses of Hollywood's golden age. But as Tom and Noëlle Crowe recall, she was also a ... Read more

Kentucky Catholics and Bourbon

The histories of whiskey and Catholicism in Kentucky have close ties. Tom and Noëlle Crowe tell us of the Kentucky pioneers who established ... Read more

Gene Kranz

Gene Kranz was an unsung hero of NASA's golden age of manned spaceflight. Tom and Noëlle Crowe tell us that as director of mission control, he ... Read more

Happy Easter from StarQuest

From all of us at StarQuest, we wish you a Happy and Blessed Easter with this brief message from our chaplain, Fr. Cory Sticha. Read more

Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra was perhaps the greatest catcher in baseball history, but he might almost be better known for "Yogi-isms," his homespun, ... Read more

The 1918 Spanish Flu and Philadelphia’s Catholics

The Influenza pandemic of 1918 hit Philadelphia particularly hard, killing up to 16,000 people. Tom and Noëlle Crowe explore how the Catholic ... Read more

John Dubois

Bishop John Dubois is one of the most important figures in American Catholic history that most people don't know. Tom and Noëlle Crowe follow ... Read more

St. Josaphat Basilica

At the beginning of the 20th century, Polish Catholics in Milwaukee planned to build a massive new church for their community. Tom and Noëlle ... Read more

Fr. Pierre Gibault and Francis Vigo

Two Catholics--a priest and a layman--were instrumental to the American victory over the British in the Northwest campaign of the Revolutionary ... Read more

Mother Beasley

Mother Beasley was a free Black woman who married into wealth and then gave it all away as a widow in order to found one of the first Catholic ... Read more

Pierre Toussaint

Pierre Toussaint was a slave brought from Haiti to New York City in the late 1700s, where he became a celebrated and in-demand hairdresser and ... Read more

Julia Greeley

Julia Greeley was a former slave and Catholic convert who lived much of her life after the Civil War. Tom and Noëlle Crowe relate her zealous ... Read more

Daniel Rudd

Born a slave before the Civil War, Daniel Rudd was a Catholic journalist, who was the first black man to own a national newspaper of any kind. ... Read more

Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich

Bl. Miriam was the first American to be beatified on US soil in 2014, but before that, as Tom and Noëlle Crowe tell us, she was a Ruthenian ... Read more

Father Peter Whelan: The Angel of Andersonville

Fr. Peter Whelan was an elderly Irish priest in Georgia and South Carolina who brought Christ to the sick and imprisoned during the Civil War. ... Read more

Blessed Stanley Rother

Bl. Stanley Rother was an Oklahoma farm boy who became a priest and then missionary in Guatemala during the height of its civil war. Tom and ... Read more