Ruth Nelson of Chicago stands next to the Father Jacques Marquette statue in Marquette Mission Park in downtown St. Ignace Friday, August 14. Ms. Nelson came to town to research the statue, as well as one on Mackinac Island, for a book she is writing about statues and events honoring the 17th century French missionary and explorer. While conducting research for her master's thesis, Ruth Nelson fell in love with the story of St. Ignace founder Father Jacques Marquette and his exploration of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River. That admiration for Fr. Marquette history has led her around the Midwest learning things long forgotten by many. Her goal is to share what she learns with the many towns connected to Fr. Marquette.

As an art history major at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ms. Nelson wrote her master's thesis on the artwork in the lobby of the Marquette Building in downtown Chicago, focusing on the mosaic and bronze artwork centralized around Fr. Marquette and his travels.

The bronze Father Jacques Marquette statue in Marquette Memorial Park on Mackinac Island is 100 years old. Sculptor Gaetano Trentanove created the piece in 1909. It is one of three Father Marquette statues he sculpted during his career, including a second bronze statue for the City of Marquette and a marble statue for the State of Wisconsin, which is permanently on display in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, DC. "We all learn about Marquette and [Louis] Joliet in grade school," she said. “As I researched, I became more interested in the Catholic history in the Midwest and this story just grabbed ahold of me. It became my passion. I just fell in love with the story.”

After earning her masters degree in 2007, she received a grant from the Corning Museum of Glass to further study mosaics. That grant spawned more interest in Fr. Marquette, and she eventually decided to write a book about the many statues and memorials honoring the 17th century French missionary and explorer.

The Father Jacques Marquette statue in Marquette Mission Park in downtown St. Ignace has a damaged hand. According to the National Park Service, Father Jacques Marquette established Michigan's earliest European settlements at Sault Ste. Marie and St. Ignace in 1668 and 1671. He lived among the Great Lakes Indians from 1666 to his death in 1675. While several Michigan locations have claimed to be his burial site, many scholars agree a 1972 archaeological dig in St. Ignace uncovered his final resting place. A national memorial is dedicated to him in St. Ignace, in addition to the statue at the city's downtown gravesite.

Ms. Nelson's research led her to the Straits area Friday, August 14, to study the Fr. Marquette statues

in St. Ignace and on Mackinac Island. She said if all goes as planned, the book, titled "Searching for Marquette," is expected to be released next year by Marquette University Press of Milwaukee. She is about halfway done with her research.

"What I'm realizing is, the more I dig, the more good stuff I learn, and the longer it takes," she said. "There's tons of history here."

Each chapter in the book will focus on the statues honoring Fr. Marquette in Midwest cities now in sites where he traveled, including Chicago, Utica, Peoria, and Summit in Illinois, Milwaukee and Prairie Du Chien in Wisconsin, Gary in Indiana, Helena in Arkansas, St. Louis in Missouri, and Marquette, St. Ignace, Mackinac Island, and Ludington in Michigan.

"I'm going around to all these cities that have Marquette monuments," she said. "I've organized the book by cities, because one city may have more than one statue."

The St. Ignace chapter will feature the white marble statue in Marquette Mission Park on State Street, and the Mackinac Island chapter will feature the bronze statue in Marquette Park in front of Fort Mackinac on Huron Street.

Sharing some of her research, Ms. Nelson told The St. Ignace News that the marble statue in St. Ignace, crafted in 1957, has a twin in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee statue fell victim to vandals and is now kept in city storage. That statue was crafted one year after the statue in St. Ignace by the same sculptor, Aldo Pera.

To replace the vandalized statue, the Milwaukee Sentinel contracted sculptor Tom Queoff in 1987 to examine the pieces of that Fr. Marquette statue, mold it, and cast a replica in bronze to coincide with the newspaper's 150- year anniversary and the 350-year anniversary of Fr. Marquette's birth. He was born in Laon, France, June 1, 1637.

Today, the bronze replica sits in Pere Marquette Park in downtown Milwaukee on West Kilbourn Avenue, near where Fr. Marquette is believed to have camped in the early 1670s.

Ms. Nelson said while both statues are fine pieces of art, they were not modeled after an authentic image of Fr. Marquette.

"It was researched that it was not an authentic image of Marquette, but it looks like [Pera] modeled his statues after that image. We really don't know what Marquette looks like," she said. "Everyone has a different interpretation."

Different statues of Fr. Marquette around the Great Lakes feature him differently. Some depict him clean shaven or with a beard, bald or with a full head of hair, and still others feature him with a stern-looking facial expression or a calm demeanor.

The two statues in the Straits area Ms. Nelson is researching also feature differing looks. The statue in St. Ignace is of a cleanshaven, balding, and calm Jacques Marquette, while the statue on Mackinac Island is bearded, fullyhaired, and stern.

The bronze statue on the Island, designed by Italian sculptor Gaetano Trentanove, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. It is a duplicate of a bronze statue of Fr. Marquette in Marquette, Michigan, which, itself, is a duplicate of a marble statue in the National Statutory Hall Collection inside the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. All three statues were made by Mr. Trentanove between 1896 and 1909.

"At one point after the Civil War, someone in Washington, D.C. said, 'We want every state to donate two statues of their most important citizens, and we'll hold those in Statutory Hall,'" Ms. Nelson said of the marble statue, which was donated by the state of Wisconsin. "This one [on Mackinac Island] is an exact replica in bronze."

Steve Brisson, chief curator of Mackinac State Historic Parks, said it took organizers on Mackinac many years to have a statue erected honoring Fr. Marquette. The effort was started in the 1870s.

"It was a culmination of an effort of many decades to create a statue in Marquette's honor," he said.

The statue is well kept and in excellent condition for a 100- year-old statue, he said. In the late 1990s, major conservation work was done to further preserve the statue. It has had two subsequent cleanings and waxings, most recently this spring to coincide with the 100-year anniversary.

"It gets the best care any bronze statue can receive," he said. "The statue is in great shape."

A small celebration in front of Fort Mackinac celebrating the statue's anniversary will take place Tuesday, September 1, at 7 p.m.

While Ms. Nelson was in St. Ignace, she spoke with local history buff Judy Gross to get more information about the city-owned statue.

"She's a good source of information," Mrs. Nelson said. "She's like a walking history book. I'm so happy to have found her. It's so great to meet people like that because otherwise, as a visitor, you don't get inside the heart of the town. But if you can connect with someone who has all this information, it just helps so much."

The two met at the St. Ignace Public Library to discuss the statue. Ms. Gross said she was able to share some photographs of the statue with its original backdrop before it was moved to its current location. The backdrop that was behind the statue when it was on the north side of the old church building, which now houses the Museum of Ojibwa Culture, was of a wooden cross resting on top of a stone teepee. Neither Ms. Gross or Ms. Nelson are sure when the statue was moved to its current location on the south side of the building, or what happened to the wood and stone backdrop.

Ms. Gross said she was pleased to share what information she has about the statue with Ms. Nelson.

"I think she left with a lot of information she didn't have before," she said.

Ms. Nelson was impressed with how well the 52-year-old St. Ignace statue is kept. The only damage to the statue are broken fingers on Fr. Marquette's right hand and the original marble cross in his left hand has been replaced with a wooden one.

The hand was broken and the statue sustained other minor damage when vandals toppled it in July 1973.

"I would like to emphasize that it is a fine piece of art," she said. However, "it's very formal and static, and that's not the trend these days, so people don't pay as much attention to it. We don't see that style that much, except for maybe wax museums. It's a fine piece and a really skilled sculptor worked on it, using the very best materials that he could."

The type of marble used for the statue, Carrara marble, is the same type of marble Michelangelo used for his sculptures at the turn of the 16th century.

Ms. Nelson is hoping her book will spark interest in the 17th century explorer in the towns he is connected to historically. She has a sense that many residents in those towns, including St. Ignace, take their heritage and history for granted.

"When you're around here and it's in your own hometown or area where you live, sometimes you just take things for granted. He was the founder of this town, after all," she said. "Many people cross by it and they don't even think about it, but [the statue has] been there since 1957."