Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Swiss-German Catholic priest and missionary Father Eugene John Weibel wrote to the Vienna, Austria–based Leopoldine Society, reporting that when he had first arrived in Pocahontas (Randolph County), less than twenty years before, only eighteen Catholics lived in the town, and there was no other priest for 150 miles. In those twenty years, he had built fifteen churches and chapels, seven schools, and five convents. Seven priests and sixty sisters served an area he once covered alone. While Weibel maintained that he hated to beg, he also reported that when a small child in Paragould (Greene County) swallowed a coin, a child nearby spontaneously exclaimed, “Call Father Weibel. He can get money out of anyone.”