Sweetman Catholic Colony

In 1881, John Sweetman brought forty-three immigrant families to farms near Currie and established the Sweetman Catholic Colony. Another nineteen families joined the colony in 1882, but two unseasonably wet growing seasons made farming difficult. By the end of 1882, half of the colonists had abandoned their farms and left the colony.

The story of the short-lived Sweetman Catholic Colony began in County Meath, Ireland, the home of John Sweetman. Sweetman was a wealthy Irish Catholic who sought to improve the lives of his impoverished compatriots. To do so, he created an assisted emigration program that would relocate poor Irish Catholics to farms in the United States.

The incorporation of the Irish-American Colonization Company (IACC), Limited, in March 1881, realized Sweetman’s vision. Sweetman served as the company’s chairman and managing director; Bishop John Ireland of St. Paul was among those appointed to the company’s board of directors.

The IACC purchased just over 17,000 acres of land near Currie and brought the first forty-three immigrant families to the colony in May 1881. Another nineteen families joined the colony in April 1882. The company provided each family with land (usually eighty acres), a small furnished home, farming implements and tools, seed, a cow, a pair of oxen and a wagon, and food for one year. These items were not donated but loaned to the colonists on generous terms of repayment. No down payment was required.

After an eighteen-month grace period, a colonist’s first payment on the land—contracted for $6 per acre at 6 percent interest—was due, but only the interest. The first full payment of interest-plus-principal was not due until one year after the initial interest-only payment. Each subsequent payment was due annually for the next eight years until the loan was repaid in full. The colonists owed the company for all the other items it supplied (tools, housing, food, seed, etc.), but as a separate loan at 8 percent interest, subject to the same repayment schedule as the land loan.

The majority of the colonists were Irish or Irish American, but a few among them were Scottish or English. Sweetman himself moved to the colony in 1881 and built (with IACC funds) a model stock farm called Buffalo Lake Farm four miles east of Currie. Sweetman also used company funds to build a new church in Currie, which he named Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church. Bishop John Ireland and Bishop John Lancaster Spalding of Peoria, Illinois, officiated the dedication ceremony of the church on September 23, 1883.

Sweetman’s intentions may have been good, but his timing was poor. The harsh winters of 1881 and 1882 were followed by unusually wet summers, resulting in dismally low crop yields. Farming in these conditions was challenging for even the most experienced grower. Inexperienced immigrants, unused to the unpredictable climate of the northern Great Plains and faced with the challenge of plowing and seeding virgin prairie, stood little chance of becoming successful farmers.

Many of the colonists became discouraged, cancelled their contracts with the IACC, and left the colony within one year of their arrival. Most of those who left did so before they had made a single payment to the IACC for their land and supplies, resulting in heavy financial losses for the company. Of the sixty-two total families who moved to the Sweetman Catholic Colony between 1881 and 1882, only thirty remained by the end of 1883.

These dismal results prompted Sweetman to reassess his project. Facing a 50 percent failure rate and mounting financial losses, Sweetman and his fellow directors effectively ended the assisted emigration program in late 1882.

The IACC remained in operation but expanded its focus to real estate, offering the sale of its lands to any interested buyers, including non-Catholics. The first advertisement announcing farms for sale in the Sweetman Colony appeared in local newspapers in November 1882. Additional advertisements followed them in newspapers and periodicals around the nation.

John Sweetman returned to his home in Ireland in 1892, leaving his cousin Walter Sweetman in Currie to manage the IACC and operate Buffalo Lake Farm. The last of the IACC’s land holdings sold in the early twentieth century, at which time the company ceased its operations.