In 1694, Father Sébastien Rale (or Rasle) arrived at Norridgewock to establish a Jesuit mission, the first school in Maine. He built a chapel of bark in 1698, and despite objections from the medicine men, Rale converted most of the inhabitants to Roman Catholicism. The chapel burned in 1705, but it was replaced with a church in 1720. It stood twenty paces outside the east gate, and measured long by wide, with an ceiling. Forty Abenaki youths in cassocks and surplices served as acolytes. In a 1722 letter written to John Goffe, the church was described by Johnson Harmon and Joseph Heath as: