Father Galtier was a French priest of the Church of Rome. He was sent by the ecclesiastic authorities of Dubuque to the Upper Mississippi country, and arrived at Fort Snelling in April, 1840, and settled at St. Peters (now Mendota), where he soon tired of inaction, and sought a larger field among the settlers who had found homes further down the river, in the neighborhood of the present St. Paul. He decided that he could facilitate his labors by erecting a church at some point accessible to his parishioners. Here he found Joseph Rondo, Edward Phalen, Vetal Guerin, Pierre Bottineau, the Gervais Brothers, and a few others. The settlers encouraged the idea of building a church, and a question of much importance arose as to where it should be placed. I will let the good father tell his own story as to the selection of a site. In an account of this matter, which he prepared for Bishop Grace in 1864, he says: "Three different points were offered, one called La Pointe Basse, or Pointe La Claire (now Pig's Eye); but I objected because that locality was the very extreme end of the new settlement, and in high water, was exposed to inundation. The idea of building a church which might at any day be swept down the river to St. Louis did not please me. Two miles and a half further up, on his elevated claim (now the southern point of Dayton's Bluff), Mr. Charles Mouseau offered me an acre of his ground, but the place did not suit my purpose. I was truly looking ahead, thinking of the future as well as the present. Steamboats could not stop there; the bank was too steep, the place on the summit of the hill too restricted, and communication difficult with the other parts of the settlement up and down the river.