The Legend of Greenbush

Father Phillip Colleton of the hailstorm vow was an Irish Jesuit born at Donaghmoyne, County Monaghan, on March 17, 1821, and ordained in St. Louis in 1863. From Osage Mission he rode a circuit reaching into Missouri, Arkansas and Indian Territory, and he is credited with at least 33 mission stations, most of them serving soldiers, railroad crews and miners. He survived a head-on train wreck between Dodge City and Fort Larned in 1873, but a fall from a railroad handcar near Ladore left him gravely hurt. He died at Osage Mission on December 1, 1876, aged 55.

What the plaque says

The Legend of Greenbush According to legend, in 1869, Father Phillip Colleton, was caught at this site by a furious hail and thunder- storm. The frightened priest took refuge under his saddle and vowed that if his life was spared, he would build a church on this spot. The fervent promise resulted in the establishment of St. Aloysius, Greenbush. The first Catholic Church erected in Crawford County was a wooden frame structure completed in 1871. Located on the Historic "Mission Road". The church was destroyed by a storm in 1877. Parishioners quarried limestone from Hickory Creek and completed the second church in 1881. The first resident pastor, Father F. M. Verdan, arrived in 1882 and served the church for fifty years. A larger church was needed and completed in 1907. The 1881 church was converted into a community building. The third church stood for 75 years as a landmark before it was struck by lightning and burned in 1982. The ruins remain. The 1881 church was renovated into a place of worship. Thus the second church became the fourth church on March 9, 1986 and served the people until it closed in 1993. Father Colleton's promise will continue. Registered state historic site - February 26, 1994. Erected by St. Aloysius Historical Society and Kansas Department of Transportation

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Miners Hall Museum — 15 mi
  Franklin's museum of the Crawford County coal camps and their immigrant families, and of the December 1921 morning the miners' wives marched to shut the mines.
• Big Brutus — 17 mi
  A 16-story electric coal shovel parked in 1974 where it stopped digging, among the flooded strip pits and reclaimed grassland of the Cherokee County coal field.
• Fort Scott National Historic Site — 27 mi
  An 1840s army post on the old Missouri border where officers kept enslaved servants, and where twenty years later the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry was mustered onto the parade ground.

More markers nearby

• Osage Catholic Mission — 10.0 mi
• Osage Nation — 16 mi
• Fort Scott — 27 mi