ROEMER, THEODORE

Historian; b. Appleton, Wis., Jan. 19, 1889; d. Mt. Calvary, Wis., Jan. 7, 1953. He attended St. Joseph School, Appleton, and the preparatory seminary, St. Lawrence College, Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin. Professed in the Capuchin Order in 1907 and ordained by Archbishop Sebastian G. Messmer on July 13, 1913, he began teaching at St. Lawrence College in 1915. From 1919 to 1921 he taught canon law at St. Anthony Seminary, Marathon, Wisconsin. After several years of pastoral activity in the Milwaukee archdiocese, he entered the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., where he specialized in American Catholic church history. Upon the completion of his master's thesis, The Leopoldine Foundation and the Catholic Church in the United States (1829–1839), he devoted a year to study at the University of Louvain, Belgium, and to research in Germany and Italy. Returning to the Catholic University of America, he was awarded a doctorate in 1933. His doctoral study, The Ludwig-Missionverein and the Church in the United States (1838–1918), traced the historical contribution made by the Ludwig Missionverein of Munich to the progress of the Catholic Church in the United States. From 1933 until his death, Roemer taught at St. Lawrence College. He was the author of Pioneer Capuchin Letters (1936), Ten Decades of Alms (1942), St. Joseph in Appleton (1943), The Alumni, St. Lawrence College (1946), and a textbook, The Catholic Church in the United States (1950).

[r. dusick]