Walla Walla’s One and Only

Today marks the death of Bishop Augustin M. Blanchet (1797-1887), the first and only Bishop of Walla Walla. Born in Quebec, he was ordained a priest in 1821. His older brother Francis N. Blanchet also became a priest and an archbishop. For twenty-five years he worked in rural parishes and in Montreal before he was named Bishop of Walla Walla in what was in now Washington State. His brother was archbishop of Oregon City. In 1850 the diocese was canonically suppressed and the Diocese of Nesqually was erected with Blanchet as Bishop. (In 1907 it was renamed Seattle and made an archdiocese in 1951.) He retired as Bishop in 1879.