It was January 1853. Benjamin Armstrong, an Alabama-born frontiersman, was traveling nearly 100 miles from La Pointe, Wis., to Ontonagon—a Michigan village located on Lake Superior’s south shore.
Halfway through his journey, Armstrong met Father Frederic Baraga—a Slovenian-born Catholic missionary—who was in trouble. His snowshoes had “given out and it would have been impossible for him to have proceeded far without them on account of the deep snow,” Armstrong wrote when recalling the encounter. He had learned Father Baraga was en route to Fond du Lac, Wis., making a 250-mile journey because he heard of “the great suffering there and that one family in particular, a widow and her children,” who were all sick. The priest, leaving in the dead of winter and without hesitation, packed medicine to aid them.
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