Enlarge

Green Bay

Elevated view of East Green Bay, Fox River, and various buildings belonging to the manufacturing industry, ca. 1906 View the original source document: WHI 31887

In the summer of 1853, 10 families from Belgium settled just east of Green Bay. They were the first in a wave of 15,000 Belgian immigrants who would soon populate the region where Brown, Door and Kewaunee counties come together. Among them was Adele Brisse, a young peasant woman who came with her parents. The Brise (a name also found spelled Brice and Brissee) family established a remote farm northwest of the Wisconsin village of Luxembourg, and young Adele often helped carry the family's wheat several miles to a mill at Dyckesville, on the bay shore.

Vision

She also walked several miles to church each Sunday, following an Indian trail that ran to Bay Settlement. On the morning of Sunday, October 9, 1859, Adele was passing through some woods in Robinsonville when she was over-powered by a vision that she later described to a nun, who related it this way:

"...there appeared between two trees, one a maple and the other a hemlock, which stood for years after, a blinding white light which paralyzed the poor girl with fear. She cowered before it and prayed rapidly and breathlessly as the light took definite form, and between the trees stood a marvelously beautiful lady, clothed entirely in dazzling white garments, with no touch of color save a wide yellow sash or girdle. Her hair was auburn; her eyes deep and dark and she bore a radiant and kindly smile. Adele trembled with fear. The vision faded gradually away."

The next Sunday she traveled the same route with companions to show them the spot. When they reached the two trees, Adele collapsed involuntarily to her knees as the vision re-appeared, though her friends saw nothing unusual. When they arrived at the church, a priest advised her that if it happened again, she should ask the beatific lady why she had appeared.

Enlarge

Map of Green Bay

Map of Lake Winnebago and the area south of the Fox River from Green Bay to Sheboygan. The map is oriented with North to the right. View the original source document: WHI 92207

Encounter and Plan

For the next several weeks curious crowds followed Adele through the woods each Sunday but nothing unusual happened. Then, a few Sundays later, her friends saw Adele once again fall to her knees between the maple and the hemlock and ask aloud, "In the name of God, who are you and what do you wish of me?"

"I am the queen of the heavens" she said in a soft and wonderful voice, "who prays for the conversion of sinners. I want you to do the same." The visionary woman told Adele, an illiterate peasant, to start a religious school for the area's children, who lived many miles from any teacher and risked growing up in ignorance.

Although she felt unqualified, and was initially rejected by church authorities, Adele succeeded in raising enough funds to start. A neighbor donated five acres and her father built a 10x12 foot wooden chapel at the site of the visions. Adele soon managed to open a free school, and was joined by a local nun named Sister Pauline who carried the church and school into the 20th century. Sister Pauline would become the main source for the early history of the church and school.

Miracles Continue

When she was rejected by authorities and scoffed at by skeptics, Adele requested divine assistance, and miracle cures began to occur in the chapel. Tales of blind visitors regaining sight, of the desperately sick being cured and of cripples restored to health began to spread. Behind the altar, a collection of discarded crutches and canes gradually built up.

Another supposed sign of divine intervention occurred during the famous Peshtigo Fire. On October 9-10, 1871 — the anniversary of Adele's vision — this massive fire spread through 400 square miles of northeastern Wisconsin, killing about 1,500 people. On the east side of Green Bay, it rapidly devastated the Belgian region. While others fled toward the lake for refuge, Adele and her community called on divine power for protection. They lifted the statue of the Blessed Virgin from the chapel and, carrying it above their heads, circled the buildings while praying for deliverance. The forest fire charred the land all around them and spread right up to the fence surrounding their enclave — but did not leap over it. Their wooden school and church stood out like an island in the burnt landscape, as accounted in the "Catholic Herald" of May 23, 1935.

Descriptions of cures and divine intervention turned the little church and school into one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in the Midwest, and it earned the nickname "Wisconsin's Lourdes." Adele Brise died in 1896 but the chapel and school are still there, now known as Our Lady of Good Help in New Franken, Wisconsin. Visitors still come each August 15th to celebrate the Catholic holiday known as the Feast of the Assumption, to see the location of the vision and miracles and to re-enact the sparing of the chapel during the Peshtigo Fire.

In December 2010, after a two-year investigation, Vatican officials confirmed that Adele's vision was an authentic appearance of the Virgin Mary, the first and only such manifestation in the United States.

Learn More

Adele Brisse

See more images, essays, newspapers and records about Adele Brisse.