Page 61 - March On! God will Provide by Brother Aubert

Chapter 7
TROUBLE AT HOME

('l ounrrlm rN naruMencH, 1838, when the ice was out
D of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, Theodore Ryken
left Saint Louis. Thanks to his sense of history and to
that of his successors in the office of Superior General
of the Xaverian Brothers, the testimonials he received
in the United States have been preserved. These docu-
ments have made it rather simple to retrace the Ryken
itinerary {rom New York to St. Louis and the return
by a different route.
From St. Louis he traveled by river boat to Pittsburgh
and then on foot o,r by stagecoach to Loretto, Pennsyl-
vania, where he called on Father Gallitzin. The testi.
.to
monial from this son of the Russian ambassador
Holland is the only one missing of those listed by Ryken
as having been obtained on this visit to the United
States. Nothing is known of its content.
From Pittsburgh, Ryken went to Baltimore, Md.,
where on April 25, 1838, Archbishop Eccleston gave
him a rather brief note. His next stop was Washington,
D. C. Here on May first, he received a new passport.
Having described "NIr. T. J. Ryken, a native of Elshout,
Kingdom of the Netherlands, having lived in New York
and lately in St. Louis in Missouri," the Dutch charge
d'afiaires added a word of explanation: "To testify we
have given him the present passport instead of an old
passport made out at The Hague, May 7,1835, by His
Excellency, the Minister of Affairs, numbered 103."
At this date Ryken was visiting with the Jesuits at
Georgetown College where Rev. William McSherry, S.J.,