A recent pilgrimage to St. Boniface Church

The funeral mass for an aunt on my wife’s side of the family last Friday morning, held at St. Boniface Catholic Church at rural Scipio, Kan., located in northern Anderson County, provided us with an opportunity to return to our families’ roots for the first time in awhile. It was kind of a pilgrimage experience. It’s always like that when we return to Scipio where we are related to so many people.

St. Boniface, with its 160-foot steeple, was the family church for my mother when she was growing up, and for her parents, and the life-long family church for her grandparents and great -grandparents, too.

St. Boniface was also the childhood family church for my wife, the life-long family church for my wife’s father, and the life-long family church for my wife’s grandparents and great -grandarents on the Lickteig side of the family.

Our families - on the Rockers and Lickteig sides - have lived in the Scipio area for about eight generations now - starting a decade or so before Kansas became a state.  

The St. Boniface Church and monastery are beautiful, limestone structures that were built on a hill in 1891 to take the place of the original church building - a log-cabin structure - that had been built there in 1859.

The history of the Catholic Church in the Scipio area started in the mid-1850s when a Jesuit mission station was established in the home of my great-great grandfather Johann Hermann Heinrich Rockers, a German immigrant, a farmer, along the Pottawatomie Creek.

The creek is named for the Potawatomi Indians who lived in the eastern part of the Kansas territory - near the Scipio area.

Father Paul Ponziglione established a mission station there that eventually grew into St. Boniface Parish. We’re proud of our families’ roles in establishing the St. Boniface parish, named in honor of the patron saint of Germany.

Father Ponziglione, an Italian Jesuit priest who was also a prolific writer, documented his mission work. By documenting his mission work, he also helped document the story of our German immigrant families, who came to America due to land shortages, inheritance customs and to avoid constant military drafts.

He is credited with founding the Catholic parish in Scipio. He operated out of the Osage Mission (now St. Paul, Kan.), establishing more than 100 missions, including 87 in Kansas alone.

Historical records note that Father Ponziglione and fellow Jesuit Father John Schoenmakers were among the earliest Europeans to reach the Pottawatomie Valley in the late 1840s and 1850s in the Scipio area.

Although the Jesuits initially served the region, the parish of St. Boniface was later transferred to the Order of Carmelites in 1865.

The St. Boniface cemetery, where more than six generations of our families are buried, is located on the side of a hill, down from the church and monastery - overlooking the Pottawaomie Creek valley. It’s a beautiful place.