Mid-Michigan Monthly
DECEMBER 2025
THIS MONTH IN HISTORY
From the photo: “Dedicated To The Memory of Henri Nouvel SJ: First White Man In The Saginaw Valley | Offered Mass On The Banks Of This River December 3, 1675”
The First Catholic Mass in Michigan’s Interior
December 3, 1675
Father Henri Nouvel’s Winter Journey into Saginaw
Long before cities, parishes, or school buildings rose along the Saginaw River, one solitary voyage helped anchor faith in Mid-Michigan’s story.
In the icy weeks of late November 1675, Jesuit missionary Father Henri Nouvel left St. Ignace and began a nearly month-long winter journey by canoe.
The route was grueling — fog, freezing rain, ice-crusted water — but his destination was clear: the Saginaw region, then home to Native communities and untouched by any European religious presence.
After battling the conditions and navigating the open water of Saginaw Bay, Nouvel reached the mouth of the Saginaw River.
And there, on December 3 — the Feast of St. Francis Xavier — he celebrated the very first Catholic Mass ever recorded in the interior of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
This moment predates Detroit’s founding by more than 26 years and marks one of the earliest documented expressions of Christian worship anywhere inside the Lower Peninsula. Father Nouvel would spend decades serving Indigenous nations throughout New France, traveling between the Odawa, Amikwa, Montagnais, and Saginaw peoples, and eventually leading the Ottawa Missions as superior.
Nearly two centuries after that December Mass, Saginaw opened its first Catholic high school; and in 1952, the Diocese erected a permanent marker on Ojibway Island to honor the site and the significance of the event.
Today, Father Nouvel’s name lives on through Nouvel Catholic Central Schools, but the legacy reaches far beyond a campus. It lives in the story of a missionary who paddled across frozen water to bring faith to a place he had never seen — and in a December morning along the Saginaw River that quietly shaped Mid-Michigan history.
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THANK YOU FOR READING
Thank you for spending a little bit of your day with us!
Thank you for spending part of your month with us. As the year winds down and the holidays draw near, we hope these stories remind you of the goodness, grit, and generosity woven into our Mid-Michigan communities. If you enjoyed this issue, share it with a friend or neighbor — it’s how our little corner of the world continues to grow.
We’ll see you in January.
Stay warm, stay kind, and Merry Christmas from The Mid-Michigan Monthly team.
The Mid-Michigan Monthly Team
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