The following account was written by AJD in 1989
Although the Quick family story has been researched back to the 16th century it must be admitted that the remotest Quick ancestor whose life in times can be described in authentic detail is George Quick (1802 to 1883) whose descendants in one direction or another are as complicated a community as his forebears ever were. George Quick gave rise to two sons, Roberts (1827 to 1892) and Thomas (1836 to 1898). Robert became the father of Joseph Louis Quick (JLQ) (1849 to 1933), and Roberts’ other descendants remain a matter of difficulty and concern to anyone interested in Quick family history. Roberts’s brother Thomas was JLQs uncle, and there is little doubt that they kept up an avuncular relationship with each other, intermittently, across the seas of time.
Thomas became a Catholic priest. In the ordinary way this might have led to a deep interest in him on the part of his nephew, JLQ. But evidently not; and thus we have no information about Thomas’s early years and how he came to take Holy Orders. His father George may have had much to do with it. The relative disinterest of JLQ might have been due to the fact that after he became a priest Thomas was the celebrant at his brother’s second marriage in 1867. And when Robert married Mary Cahill its spelt disaster for his son, JLQ, because he was only three years younger than his new stepmother.
The following account is based upon two discoveries. The first was a set of seven empty envelopes posted to JLQ from the United States of America which came down to me from my mother, his youngest daughter. The second was a copy of “The Harvest” volume 12 No 137 for February 1899 which was given to me by my cousin Winnie O’Halloran, the daughter of JLQ’s eldest daughter.
It appears from the Harvest that Father Thomas, after many years of priestly duty in Manchester, retired “owing to serious indisposition and overwork” and took up pastoral work in South Dakota, United States. The article is tantalisingly deficient in details, but it seems valid to conclude from it that Father Thomas went to the United States in 1886, when he was about 50 years old. Of the seven envelopes, the first 4 are addressed in the same hand. The first is to JLQ and 3 Victoria Road, Upton, and the next three to 30 Norwich Road, Forrest Gate. (The misspelling of Forest is a hallmark.) I have little doubt that those empty envelopes once contained letters, now lost, from Father Thomas to his nephew JLQ. The first envelope was sent on the 15th of June 1887 from a town called Beatrice in the state of Nebraska.
It now seems appropriate to describe what kind of the missionary enterprise Father Thomas had embarked upon in terms of his physical and geographical surroundings. The three central American states are stacked like playing cards on top of one another, South Dakota in the North then Nebraska and Kansas in the South. They embraced the great plains of the United States, and by English standards that distances are enormous.
The three states are virtually bounded by the 104th degree of longitude in the West and by the vast river Missouri in the east, between which lies a span of 400 miles of well watered, gently rolling prairie. Each state occupies about 77,000 square miles. In the days of Father Thomas only the eastern fringes were more or less civilised. The climate is continental and the temperature ranges from 43 degrees C in summer to miners 37 degrees C in winter. Rainfall is capricious; in 1890 the drought caused a total collapse in the price of land.
These open prairies weren’t the obvious route to the wild west through the Rocky Mountains. When gold was found in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1874, the town of Deadwood came to life in the unregulated style which we have come to imagine. The Union Pacific railroad driven through Nebraska in 1869 and the various highways laid from East to West were menaced by the Wild Bunch and Jesse James.
Apart from the fact that the Red Indians still constituted a major segment of the population, South Dakota was not exactly a convalescent home for retired and failing Lancastrian priests.
By 1890 12 religious sects were evangelising in South Dakota, and of those the Catholics were the most numerous; they included many from Bohemia, Germany and of course Ireland. Yet by the 20th century they had been supplanted by the Lutherans. Father Thomas Quick had an uphill task.
According to The Harvest he laboured at Parker (in South Dakota) until 1896, having charge of four station chapels in a radius of 100 miles, travelling from one to the other in a buggy cart. How he did that had minus 37 degrees C defies the imagination. Yet his second letter of the 28 October 1893 was posted from Kansas City, Kansas. (The twin city is in Missouri). Perhaps some passing native American happened to be going there.
Again according to The Harvest in 1896 he was appointed pastor of SS. Simon and St Jude’s, Flandreau. His last letter to JLQ was posted from Flandreau on the 25th of January 1897 and he died there on the 23rd of October 1898. The JLQ noted the date. Thus another “unknown” Quick joins the great majority. Perhaps, one day, one of our grandchildren will find his grave. After all he was their great-great granduncle. The last three of the seven empty envelopes were addressed in a different hand. They were posted from St Bridget (which I cannot locate) and from Axtell, both in Kansas state. They are dated the 25th of November 1898, the second of January 1899 (registered) and 31st March 1899. It seems that when the clearing up, consequent upon the death of Father Thomas, had to be done, the ecclesiastical authorities in Kansas City called upon his nephew, JLQ, in far-flung Forest Gate. By that time everyone of Thomas’s generation had long gone.
In January 2002 I contacted Anna Duncan at the Moody County Genealogical Society and retold this story written by AJD. Her response was generous and included many details of the time spent by Thomas in Flandreau. The centenary of the catholic church of SS. Simon and Jude was celebrated in 1982 and the Centennial Book includes the following:
“Father Thomas Quick came in 1896 and was pastor until his death in 1898. He is buried in the local cemetery.
A pamphlet entitled “Monks – Indians – White Men” which tells the history of the parish says of Father Quick “Father Quick had not only the distinction of leaving the impression of his priestly character on the little parish of Flandreau, for was known and heralded abroad as a great missionary priest, and it was he who administered the last sacraments to William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O’Brien, when they died for Ireland.” these men were the famous Manchester martyrs and Father Quick was with them at their deaths. He cut off a lock of hair from each patriot which he kept as a souvenir.
The pamphlet continues “It was to escape such scenes that Father Quick left England and came to America, coming to the West where priests were few and the harvest was great. It was thus that our South Dakota and the people of Flandreau had the good fortune of securing his priestly services to the very end.”
Father Quick was advanced in years when he came to Flandreau. He was responsible for the belfry on the old rectory which saved him from having to go to the church building to ring the bell for Angelus and to summon parishioners to Mass. He purchased the bell April 18, 1898 for $227.62.”
Reproductions of the “Inventory of Parsonage” and “Supplies to the Altar and Sanctuary” written in his hand are included in the book. Anna also sent photographs of the church, his headstone and the memorial.
