To Father Anselm Weber, 1862 - 1921, belongs most of the credit for establishing this Catholic mission at St. Michaels in Apache County, Arizona. In point of time he belonged to the first quarter of the twentieth century. As a missionary he has a rightful place in that long line of Catholic missionaries that ties together the centuries back to apostolic times.
Anselm Weber maintained a huge correspondence with his Franciscan confreres, with the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, with government agencies, and with a host of friends and relative. These letters and papers, preserved in five principal collections, have furnished the base for research. Fortunately for the historian the missionary saved practically every letter he received, and made copies of all business letters he wrote, even before he used a typewriter in 1903. Moreover, he wrote regularly and on a great variety of subjects in mission and church magazines
