The only exception to this are the windows in the Baptistery. In the Baptistery the windows are
probably from the old church, which was torn down in 1925. These windows would have been
made about 1882. They're definitely not of the quality of the windows in the main nave of the
church, and they don't have the triple theme like the windows in the main nave.
On the eastern wall of the Baptistery, which is the base of the bell tower, you have the baptism
of Christ by St. John the Baptist, in the Jordan River. This is a very common theme in catholic
churches to have a scene of St. John baptizing Christ somewhere in the Baptistery.
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On the north window there is a priest baptizing an American Indian. I believe this to be Father Du
Ru, who celebrated the first known mass in Iberville Parish, somewhere in the area of Bayou
Goula. He had a chapel there already in 1700. He celebrated the first mass in 1699, and that's the
first record of anyone celebrating mass in Iberville. So I think that priest is baptizing one of the
Goula Indians down in Bayou Goula, and I think that's Father Du Ru, who was a French Jesuit.
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The south window of the Baptistery shows a group of nuns in front of a church, which is not easy
to identify. But its definitely not one of the churches that stood on this site and I don't think that
it's St. Gabriel, which was begun back in the 1760s or 1770s. I don't think it's that church. I
suspect that it is the chapel at the Convent of the Nuns of the Sacred Heart in St. Charles,
Missouri. In 1722, St. Phillipine Duchesne, who brought the religious of the Sacred Heart to the
United States, left that convent in St. Charles, Missouri to come visit her second foundation in the
U.S. at Grand Coteau. On that trip she passed through Plaquemine, and in fact, she got stuck here
for seven days on the way out and five days on the way back, waiting for boats. She didn't have
many kind things to say about Plaquemine. But at least we know that we had a canonized saint
who passed through here. I think that's St. Phillipine Duchesne in that south window, although
she does not where a halo because the window was made before she was canonized. She was not
canonized until the early 1980s, and, of course, that window probably was made a hundred years
before that. But, apparently there was some awareness that she had been through here.
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