News

St. Andrew's hospital celebrates 100 years

By Scott Wagar

04/09/2013

Editor’s Note: From May 5-11 St. Andrew’s Health Center will be celebrating its 100th Anniversary as a medical facility. In celebration of St. Andrew’s Centennial, the Bottineau Courant will be writing a series of articles on the health facility and its history. The first story will be on the man who originated the idea of St. Andrew’s, Monsignor Joseph Andrieux.

This year marks the 100th Anniversary of St. Andrew’s Health Center, which was established by a strong and spiritual man from France, Joseph Andrieux, who came to Bottineau County as a catholic missionary and established himself as a caretaker for those who needed medical attention.
In reality, one can say that origins of St. Andrew’s Health Center were established in Cahors, France, on May 26, 1882, when Andrieux was born in the small French community.

Andrieux grew up in a strict religious home. However, his goal in life was to become a soldier in the French Army. It wasn’t unusual for Andrieux as a young man to want to become a soldier, because he came from a family in the late 1800s where every man in the family, except two, had served in the French Army in the past 900 years.
Andrieux graduated from the Saint Cyr Military Academy and quickly joined the French Cavalry.

He worked his way through the ranks to become a captain and as an officer was stationed in the Sahara Desert within the North Africa Theater.

As a horse soldier, Andrieux enjoyed his time in the military. However, in the late 1890s, an incident would happen which would change the life of Andrieux and send him on to a different calling.

During that time, The French Socialist government of the Third Republican started passing anti-religious laws. In early1902, the government passed a law which confiscated church land.

The French Armed forces were ordered to carry out the government’s new law. However, Andrieux refused to go against his religious beliefs and resigned his commission from the French Army.

On June 29, 1902, Andrieux entered the Major Seminary in Toulouse, France. Two years into his religious studies, Bishop Ireland of St. Paul and Bishop Shanley of Fargo came to France searching for missionaries who would be willing to immigrate to the Dakotas.

Andrieux had an interest in becoming a missionary in the new world and agreed to come to America for a period of 10 years after he finished his last year of seminary.

On June 25, 1905, Andrieux was ordained to the priesthood and left for the United States in 1906. He first reported to the Fargo Diocese under the leadership of the Most Reverend Bishop James O’Reilly.

O’Reilly sent Andrieux to Bottineau County where he would take over a church in the village of Tarsus, which was a small French speaking community.

Andrieux’s introduction to North Dakota was a learning experience he would never forget. He left Fargo on a nice day in late October/early November but by the time he entered into Bottineau County he was surrounded by a blinding blizzard. On horse, he made his way to Tarsus, but in the storm he lost his direction and ended up on a small farm about one-mile east out of Bottineau (the present day home of Lawrence and Betty Jordan).

With the snow and wind being relentless, the Catholic priest spent his night in Bottineau County in a home owned by a Protestant farmer. The next day, the local farmer guided Andrieux to Tarsus where he discovered another hardship. In the late 1890s, the Catholic church in Tarsus was lost to fire. In 1899, construction started on a new church, but the French speaking Catholic community was having difficulty in raising the money to finish the church.

When Andrieux arrived that morning after the blizzard, he thought there was a church with his parish, but discovered his church (and home) was a basement covered with boards for a roof.

For the first year, Andrieux lived and held services in the basement of the future church, but worked hard to raise the money to re-start construction, which he did, and quickly. By the summer of 1907, the church was constructed and ready for service.

In 1910, O’Reilly sent Andrieux to Bottineau to become the priest of St. Marks.

At first, Andrieux was against coming because St. Marks was an English speaking church and he couldn’t speak the language. However, Andrieux obeyed O’Reilly and moved to Bottineau, he learned the English language, and began his missionary work in Bottineau.

Andrieux’s missionary work sent him to serve a number of churches in the area, he purchased land and farmed it to learn the ways of his parishioners who were agricultural producers and he established St. Andrew’s Health Center.

He came up with the idea of a hospital while out in the surrounding area visiting one of his missions when he realized that a good number of people in the county were dying from curable diseases. He discovered that all physicians were centrally located in the county’s communities and that when local residents became ill, physicians had to travel great distances by horse and buggy to get to their patients, which at times meant a patient would die before their arrival.

Andrieux’s summarized that if there was a hospital with physicians practicing in the facility it could save time and lives. With that idea, Andrieux started raising money like he did back in Tarsus and was able to raise the money to establish St. Andrew’s Health Center in Bottineau in 1913.

For Andrieux, 10 years turned into 54 years. As he grew older, he would sell his farm land and gave it to the Diocese in Fargo to pay for a large number of men who wanted to enter the priesthood. Other money he earned in the community, he donated to assist in the construction of the present day St. Marks church.

Through his goodness and faithful work to the Catholic Church, Pope Pius XII granted Andrieux the title of Monsignor and gave Andrieux a private meeting with him at the Vatican in Rome.

During the 50th anniversary of St. Marks, Frank Wright of the Minneapolis Tribune wrote a story on Andrieux and questioned his future in Bottineau.

“To move would break my heart. I shall die here and be buried here,” the old French churchman said very quietly. “This is my home.”

On Sept. 9, 1960, Monsignor Andrieux passed away.

In his passing, Andrieux left a legacy of great works and deeds, but what stood out above all was his hard work with the hospital he built for the community and county.

The hospital he originated started with six interesting women who would come to Bottineau and start a small, humble hospital which would grow in size and reputation as one of the best hospitals in the state.

Writer’s Note: Next week, the Bottineau Courant looks at the origins and history of St. Andrew’s Health Center. Sources for this article include “The People of Bottineau County” and “Fifty Years a Growing.”