In 1848, the Jesuits of Grand Coteau were asked to establish a church in a settlement where they had been coming for some time to offer Mass in a private home. They bought land on a bend in Bayou Plaquemine and set up the first Catholic church in the Acadia Parish area. The place became known as La Chapelle de la Pointe de Plaquemine Brulee, anglicized Church Point. The first post office here (1873) was consequently named Church Point, Louisiana, and the town was incorporated in 1899 under the same name.

Cross Village is one of the oldest settlements in Michigan and today is known for its ties to the Native American Ottawa tribe. As late as 1787, as many as twenty tribes populated the region and met here around tribal council fires. Jesuits came here in the early 1600s and Father Jacques Marquette is said to have planted the original huge white cross on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan before his death in 1675. Today, a replica of his cross stands at the edge of the bluff and is visible from far off shore. The Native Americans called the village Anamiewatigoing (At the Tree of Prayer, or Cross). The name La Croix (The Cross) was used from 1847 to 1875 when it was changed to Cross Village.

Father Claude Allouez, SJ, around 1670 opened a chapel dedicated to St. Francis Xavier in an Indian village where today stands the town of De Pere, Wisconsin. The town supposedly takes its name from the nearby cataracts on the Fox River called the Rapides des Peres (Rapids of the Fathers), although the former name of the town was Père Marquette.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1930, postmark from Holy Cross, Territory of Alaska

The name "Holy Cross" was given to this church and mission by its Jesuit founder, Fr. Aloysius Robaut, SJ. It was founded in 1888 and is located 279 miles upriver from the Bering Sea on the right bank of the Yukon. Holy Cross's long Catholic history began with a little two story log cabin mission, originally intended as a Jesuit house, but soon the cabin became a convent, and the convent a boarding school. By the time the boarding school closed in 1956, some 95 Jesuits had served on this mission. More

BRAZIL, 2009 postmark for Jesuitas in the Brazilian state of Paraná.

Jesuitas is a city in the Brazilian state of Paraná. The first pioneers to arrive in the city region came in 1959 and 1960 in search of in timber and agricultural cultivation. The name was given to the city in honor of Jesuit priests who evangelized the Indians who lived here. Coffee plantations are the economic mainstay of the city, with more than 10 million trees planted.

 
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1913, postmark from Church Point, Louisiana
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1931, postmark from Jesuit Bend, Louisiana

By the 1848, there were enough residents on Bayou Plaquemine in Louisiana for Jesuit missionaries to construct a mission chapel here on land donated by the Daigle brothers. The church was known as "La Chapelle de la point de Plaquemine Brulee" later shortened in Enlish to "Church Point." More

Jesuit Bend has a much older history. One might start with the fact that Louisiana was claimed for the French crown by the former Jesuit de La Salle in 1682. In the late 1690s Jesuit Father Paul du Ru, SJ settled at a bend in the Mississippi River, where he built the first church in Louisiana out of wild cane walls and a palmetto roof. Around 1751 Malabar sugar cane was brought by Jesuits from the Jesuit plantations in Santo Domingo, introducing the crop that would become the basis of Louisiana's agricultural economy. The cane was called "Creole." The Jesuits still run an old farm there growing sugar cane and oranges. The post office closed in 1931.

Priest River, Idaho (the town), and the nearby Priest River (the river) and Priest Lake are related. Fr. Peter De Smet in 1846 christened the lake Roothan Lake to honor his Jesuit superior general. A nearby mountain still bears the name Roothan. The lake was later Priest Lake, honoring Jesuit missionaries in general rather than the one Jesuit General. The name of river and town followed suit.

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