Seghers, Charles Jean (26 December 1839–28 November 1886), Catholic archbishop and Alaskan missionary, was born in Ghent, Belgium, the son of Charles Francis Seghers, a florist, and Paulina (née Seghers), a cook. His parents later became moderately wealthy shopkeepers. At the age of twenty he became the sole survivor of his parents and siblings, most of whom died from tuberculosis. Upon graduating from a local Jesuit college in 1858, Seghers entered the city’s diocesan seminary. Despite weak health he enrolled in 1861 in the American College of Louvain, founded to train clergy for missionary careers in the United States. His intelligence, unassuming piety, and pleasant disposition led teachers and classmates to view him as an ideal seminarian. Ordained a priest in 1863, Seghers emigrated to the Pacific Northwest in hopes of ministering to Native Americans; instead his fluency in English and poor health kept him in Victoria where he served as parish priest and assistant to Modeste Demers, bishop of Vancouver Island. During the bishop’s absences from the diocese Seghers acted as his replacement. Demers, expecting that the consumptive young priest would not live long, invited Seghers to travel with him to Rome as his secretary for the First Vatican Council. Upon returning to Victoria, Seghers assumed increasingly more responsibilities when Demers’s own health began to fail. In 1873, two years after Demers’s death, 33-year-old Seghers became his successor....
