Stories from the First Cathedral 41

After the audience with President Lincoln and General McClellan, Bishop Whiopple returned home to Faribault, MN. Many were surprised that he selected Faribault to be his home.

 "Whipple surprised local church leaders by electing to live in Faribault, out on the prairie sixty miles south of the capital, where he could better afford a dignified house and provide himself with a more central point of departure as he traveled his new diocese behind his trusted horse, Bashaw, visiting towns, thriving farms, and 'one-roomed log huts, where my bedroom had to be improvised by partitioning one end of the room with a sheet.' 'Many of the frontier settlers were people of refinement and culture who, in some financial panic, had lost everything and had pre-empted homes in the West, where they lived in independence, scorning to apologize to their bidden guest for their meager surroundings,' he wrote. 'The genuine pioneer may be a rude man, but he is seldom an infidel.'" (38 Nooses by Scott W Berg 2012) 

When Bishop Whipple was present in Faribault in 1862, he launched what in his eyes was his most important project; the building of the Cathedral of Our Merciful Saviour. The first Cathedral in the United States was started in 1862 and finished in 1869. The Cathedral concept was vital to Henry Whipple as being the seat of the Bishop, but also a place for the community of Faribault to gather all kinds of people in an open welcoming place to show God's love. A Cathedral is not just a church or a place of worship. A Cathedral is a central structure, which is built in a majestic way to show the beauty of God's creation in the art, architecture, music making and central events for all cultures. The First Cathedral has all of these traits in Faribault. The First Cathedral or the Cathedral of Our Merciful Saviour compliments the other institutions in Faribault such as Shattuck-St Mary's school, the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf, the Minnesota State Academy for the Blind  and the Minimum to Medium Minnesota Correctional Facility - Faribault (which was the Faribault State Hospital for the mentally ill for over 100 years). At the turn of the 20th century, Faribult was called the "Athens of the West."