In Coupeville, every view, every creak of the wharf, every old home, every bowl of mussels holds elements of the town’s past and present. Other images also hold powerful places in the town’s heritage.

Saturday, St. Mary’s Catholic Church highlighted the position the cross and ladder hold in Coupeville’s history. Church members gathered at Coupeville Wharf as their current priest, Fr. Ronald Belisle, reenacted the arrival of Fr. F.N. Blanchet, the first priest or “Black Gown,” on Whidbey Island.

“Coupeville has such a rich history, we wanted to do our part,” Fr. Belisle said. “I’m so happy I could be a part of this day.” Belisle recently learned he is a sixth cousin to Fr. Blanchet.

“It was a tremendously appropriate reenactment of the history of Whidbey Island,” Dr. Wylie Vracin said in a telephone interview Monday night.

Vracin has been choir director at St. Mary’s for 20 years. At a parish council meeting earlier this year, he asked what the church was doing to celebrate Coupeville’s 150th anniversary. The church decided a good way to honor the history of the church and Coupeville was to recall Fr. Blanchet’s arrival.

Blanchet arrived May 26, 1840, a bit before Coupeville’s official founding year of 1853, and he probably came ashore near Ebey’s Landing on the island’s west side, not in Penn Cove on the east side. Odds are, Blanchet didn’t wear Teva sandals as Father Belisle wore. But to the congregation, these inconsistencies were unimportant. What was important was the Catholic ladder Fr. Blanchet brought with him to the island.

According information from the church and WashingtonHistoryLink.org, Blanchet designed the Catholic ladder to teach native people Christianity and Catholicism. The priest developed the innovative tool in 1838 while he was near Fort Vancouver and teaching Indian chiefs about the life of Christ. Blanchet’s original ladder was a wooden post incised with rectangles, circles, squares, dots and crosses which symbolized a particular person or time in Christianity and church history.

In the 1830s, the West Coast was controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company and its representatives were Catholic French-Canadians. The bishop of Quebec sent priests as missionaries; these priests wore black robes. Since the priests’ arrival, Indians had been requesting “Black Gowns” be sent to native groups.

“Father Blanchet designed his ladder to mimic a totem pole,” Belisle said. “The Indians were illiterate and Blanchet wanted to present Christianity in a way that was familiar to them.”

Chiefs copied the message on small “sahale” or holy sticks and took the message back to their people. By the time Fathers Blanchet and Demers came to Whidbey Island, the Native Americans knew the message on the ladder and hymns translated into Chinook, the trade language on the coast. Blanchet wrote in his diaries how surprised and pleased he was that the people repeated the sign of the cross when he blessed them although they had never seen a priest.

Fr. Belisle and Richard Duggan, Jr., as Fr. Demers, Blanchet’s companion, crossed the mudflats and climbed steps to the wharf. Duggan carried a the Catholic ladder which had been printed on a cloth banner. Belisle blessed the crowd then directed them to Island County Historical Society’s museum where a segment of the cross erected for Fr. Blanchet’s visit stands next to Alexander Blockhouse. After Belisle, spoke briefly on the position the cross and the banner hold in Pacific Northwest history, the group walked along Front Street and up to St. Mary’s on N. Main Street. Along the way, the group sang hymns including “The Old Rugged Cross.”

On the church’s grounds lay a replica of the 24-foot tall wooden cross that had been erected for Blanchet’s first visit.

Men of the church raised the new cross and cemented it in place, as Fr. Belisle blessed and consecrated it. Members local of the Knights of Columbus hosted a potluck barbecue following the reenactment.

Juanita Robinette had been too busy supplying the barbecuers with necessities to see the entire reenactment. “But my heart raced when I saw everyone walking up the hill behind the ladder,” she said. “It was so moving.”

Rich McCormick and Kathryn Anne Pigott had helped organize the program and were happy with the morning.

“They didn’t sink to their knees in mud, so I’m very pleased,” McCormick said, noting the low tide conditions.

“Father’s coming ashore was a joyful sight,” Pigott added.

The raising and centering of the cross affected Vracin. “It was a powerful symbol of Christianity arriving,” he said.

“People in Coupeville are so energetic about preserving history,” Vracin said.