Forest, Father Eugene J.

Date of Death: Unknown

Date of Birth: Unknown

When this compilation was first presented in 1983, the dates of death for several confreres who labored in the United States were unknown. For this present edition (1994) of obituary notices, every effort was made to track down the death dates of those confreres. Only the date of death of Eugene J. Forest has not been discovered.

Father Forest came to Baltimore from France in 1886. He taught at St. Mary’s Seminary until 1901 or 1902. About that time he seems to have suffered a mental breakdown and to have left the seminary; he found himself in New Orleans. Brought back to Baltimore, he was committed in 1903 to Mount Hope, an asylum for the mentally ill operated by the Daughters of Charity. Having, so it seems, fled the asylum, he came, without permission from his superiors, to Paris in August of 1905. Unable to make contact with Sulpician authorities — perhaps because it was vacation time — Father Forest wrote to the pastor of St. Sulpice to ask for help. He told the pastor he was thinking of appealing to the civil authorities. He seems to have dropped out of sight, for in the following years the Alumni Bulletin of St. Sulpice makes no mention of his death. The date of his death is therefore unknown. He is commemorated on November 21st along with Fathers Coupé and Tiphaigne.