Book excerpt: This is a book about four Roman Catholic pioneers—explorers and developers—whose lives crossed each other’s paths in Old Mines, Missouri, in the middle of the 1800s. Two of them were priests, and one of them was a bishop, then an archbishop. One was a laywoman, who was very generous with her riches. Three of them were not only of Irish descent but came from Ireland. The laywoman was French, and she came from Ste. Genevieve. The Great Potato Famine in Ireland in the 1840s brought all of them together in the oldest village in the state of Missouri: Old Mines. The potato famine brought many Irish to Missouri in the nineteenth century to farm, to build railroads, and to construct churches for worship. This is the story of pioneers Marie-Louise (Bolduc) Lamarque, Peter Richard Kenrick, James Fox, and John Joseph Hogan. Their lives crossed each other’s paths in Old Mines, Missouri, a lead-mining village about sixty miles south of St. Louis (before St. Louis existed) and about forty miles east of Ste. Genevieve (before Ste. Genevieve existed).