Seminaries and Writing the History of New Spain: An Interview with Stafford Poole, C.M.

Over the course of the past half century, the field of colonial Latin American history has been greatly enriched by the contributions of Father Stafford Poole. He has written 14 books and 84 articles and book chapters and has readily shared his knowledge at countless symposia and other scholarly forums. Renowned as a historian, he was also a seminary administrator and professor of history in Missouri and California. Moreover, his background and formation are surely unique among priests in the United States and his story is certainly worth the telling.

Stafford's family's presence in the United States dates from 1636. Some of these early arrivals helped found, under Peter Stuyvesant, the city of Jamaica, New York. A great-great-great-grandfather of Stafford Poole served in both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, and a great-great-grandfather served as a captain in the U.S. Army under Alexander Hamilton. A distant cousin was a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, and Stafford's grandfather, Edward Poole, served in the Union army during the Civil War. Another branch of the family, the Downings, was from Northern Ireland, with the name Stafford first appearing in 1732. It is likely that the famous street in London is named after relatives.

Stafford's great-grandparents moved to California in 1886, and in 1928 his parents settled in North Hollywood where Stafford attended public school. Several of his classmates were members of celebrity families. His father's employment afforded him the opportunity to get free tickets to radio shows, and he attended as many as he could during the 1930s and 1940s. He was also a guest in the homes of Hollywood luminaries such as Bob Hope and Bela Lugosi.

Stafford is particularly grateful for having attended his public school because of the music appreciation classes, which gave him a lifelong love of classical music. He joined the Congregation of the Mission after high school, in 1947.¹ During his years as a priest in Saint Louis, the Metropolitan Opera's national company performed there every spring. He learned to like opera and over the years saw and heard some of the greats in the operatic world. Still a consummate aficionado of splendid music and early Hollywood, Stafford lives at the Vincentian house near downtown Los Angeles, next to a private residence whose film-star tenants over time included Fatty Arbuckle, Theda Bara, and Norma Talmadge. Adjacent to the facility is the magnificent landmark church that is descended from the chapel of the Old St. Vincent's College (1865-1911). Built by the oil baron Edward Doheny and his wife Estelle and opened in 1926, it is modeled after the cathedral of Santa Prisca in Taxco, Mexico.

Susan Schroeder:

In June 2011 you celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of having received your Ph.D. in colonial Latin American history. Yet it is my understanding that it was your original intention to study U.S. history. Why the switch to colonial Latin America?

Stafford Poole:

Basically, almost all of my graduate courses were in U.S. history and modern Europe, and that is what I thought I would major in. I began graduate studies at Saint Louis University as a seminarian in 1952 and finished them as a priest in 1961. I was planning to write my dissertation on slaveholding by Catholic institutions in Missouri. The reason I was interested was that I had found a receipt for the sale of a 12-year-old boy to Bishop Joseph Rosati, the first Catholic bishop of Saint Louis. And I thought that was fascinating. We had heard all kinds of stories about slaveholding by the seminary. One of the results was that on Friday evenings, as a penance, the meal consisted of slaves' food, which was cornbread and beans, and maybe some greens. But we did not know that at the time; I found out afterward. Later, a colleague, Douglas Slawson, and I published a book on Catholic slaveholding in one area of Missouri.² So I was going to do that...