Isidore Robot

Isidore Robot, OSB (July 18, 1837 – February 15, 1887) was a French-born missionary of the Catholic Church who served as Apostolic Prefect of the Indian Territory, Oklahoma from 1876 to 1887.

Born July 18, 1837, at Tharoiseau, Yonne, France, Dom Isidore Robot, O.S.B., entered the nearby Benedictine monastery of Sainte-Marie de la Pierre-qui-Vire.

After the fall of Emperor Napoleon III in 1870, anticlerical laws enacted under the French Third Republic began closing convents and monasteries throughout France.

The church was built by and for the Irish-born workers of the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad who lived in the town and various local residents, including a leader of the Choctaw, Benjamin Franklin Smallwood.

As a missionary, Robot's focus was on American Indians, especially the Potawatomis and the Osages, and the coal miners working for the Choctaw Nation.

Through all the years of his leadership of the Territory, Robot maintained the ascetic regimen of monastic life, rising for prayer at 3 A.M. and fasting constantly.

In late 1884 Robot attended the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, one of the defining gatherings by American bishops for the Catholic Church in the United States.