Augustus Tolton

John Augustus Tolton (baptized Augustine; April 1, 1854 – July 9, 1897) was an African American Catholic who served as the first openly 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.

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.

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 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's 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.

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."