The singular person in the establishment of Little Chute as a Catholic Dutch-American community was a Dominican missionary: Father Theodore J. van den Broek. Born to wealthy parents in Amsterdam, Netherlands in June 1784, he had relatives in Uden, Noord Brabant, Netherlands and apparently spent time there as a youth. He was highly educated and fluent in six languages. He was ordained a priest in 1808 and joined the Dominican Order in 1817. After a period as a pastor in the Netherlands, he left in 1832 at the age of 49 to join other missionary priests at Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1834 he was ordered to Green Bay to an established Dominican mission. In Green Bay he met the Grignon family, and probably through this contact he went to La Petite Chute in 1836. There he built the first church for the Menominee Indians, St. John Nepomucene, one of several he would establish in the area. Father Van den Broek also met Morgan Lewis Martin, who was in charge of the local canal project. Father Van den Broek purchased land in the area which he later hoped to sell. In that same year, 1836, the Menominees signed the “Treaty of the Cedars” which required them to give up title to the local land and move beyond the Wolf River to the west.