Bruyer Church

The bronze's claim to the first Catholic church has a rival. Wikipedia's history of the Diocese of Sioux Falls gives that title to St. Peter's at Jefferson, dedicated in 1867, while Arthur Rusch's 2010 history of early Vermillion agrees with the plaque that the Bruyer settlement had the territory's first Catholic church in 1860. Catholics were here before either building. The French missionary Augustin Ravoux, who had come up the Missouri to baptize children at Fort Pierre in 1842, ministered to Catholic families at Vermillion in 1845, while it was still a fur post.

What the plaque says

Bruyer Church August Bruyer, his wife, Josephine (Simon) and their sons, John and Julius, were born in France, coming to America about the middle of the nineteenth century. By 1858, they had settled in Fairview Township, 4 miles east of what was to be Vermillion. They were Catholic and in 1859, August donated ten acres for a church site and cemetery. In 1860, a small log dirt floor church was built thereon sited on the SW of the SE of the NE of Section 15, Township 92 North, Range 51 West. This was the first Catholic Church building in South Dakota. The church was dependent thereafter on transient priests until 1879, usually from St. Peter's Church, Jefferson, established in 1862. There was no other Catholic Church in Clay County. In 1879, a resident pastor was appointed for the Church and under the supervi- sion of Father Hennesy, a new and commodious frame church was built, south of the present cemetery, on a site on the south side of the road. The first log church was located on the southeast corner of the present cemetery. This new church served the Vermillion community until a new church was built in Vermillion in 1885 under Father Collins. In 1905 the Fairview parish was discontinued and the members attached to the Vermillion parish. In the Fairview cemetery, gravestones are to be found bearing the names of Bruyer, Lynch, Carey and other early settlers. Erected 1966 by Marquette Assembly, Knights of Columbus, Sioux Falls and South Dakota Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Music Museum — 3.9 mi
  One of the great collections of musical instruments in the world, on a college campus in a prairie town, built around a band teacher's thousands of horns, fiddles and curiosities.
• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 8.1 mi
  A lone hill north of Vermillion that Lewis and Clark walked to on a scorching day in 1804, now one of the few places left where you can stand exactly where they stood.
• Ponca State Park — 15 mi
  Oak ravines and bluffs at the downstream end of the Missouri's last unchannelized reach in Nebraska, with a three-state overlook and the river's resource and education center.

More markers nearby

• First Rural Electric Cooperative — 1.1 mi
• First Permanent Schoolhouse in Dakota Territory — 4.2 mi
• Grand Officers — 4.2 mi
• Andrew Lee — 4.3 mi