Anthony Dominic Ubach was a Roman Catholic priest and long-time advocate for the education of Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

s in San Diego, California

San Diego, California

San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...

 during the late 19th century.

Ubach was the first American appointed to serve Mission San Diego de Alcalá

Mission San Diego de Alcalá

Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá, in San Diego, California, was the first Franciscan mission in the Las Californias Province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. It was founded in 1769 by Spanish friar Junípero Serra in an area long inhabited by the Kumeyaay Indians...

 after California's annexation

Annexation

Annexation is the de jure incorporation of some territory into another geo-political entity . Usually, it is implied that the territory and population being annexed is the smaller, more peripheral, and weaker of the two merging entities, barring physical size...

 by the United States. In 1862, President Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

 had signed an order returning the mission lands to the Catholic Church. Presumably appointed by Bishop

Bishop

A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...

 Thaddeus Amat--then the Bishop of the Diocese of Monterey-Los Angeles--Ubach arrived in 1866 to find that the mission had been used by the U.S. military for nearly twenty years, and was in a total state of disrepair.

As soon as he arrived, as well as the restoration of the church itself, Ubach sought ways to provide vocational training to the young Native Americans of the mission. At that time, there was no efforts made by the U.S. government for the education of Native Americans, and for nearly twenty years, he had to rely on private resources, mostly the Presbyterian mission office. By the time they ceased to provide aid, a national office of the Catholic Church dedicated to the assistance of Blacks and Native Americans had been established and was able to provide limited support. This office had come about through the work of Mother (later Saint) Katherine Drexel.

For this work, three schools were eventually founded, and were run by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, whom Ubach met when they passed through San Diego on their way to Arizona, their first establishment in the region.

Ubach served as pastor of the mission until his death in 1907.

Sources

• Teresa Baksh McNeil. 1988. "St. Anthony's Indian School in San Diego, 1886-1907." Journal of San Diego History.