1838–1855
To the years of gathering, the parish's own history attaches a story of gratitude: the Bilderbeck family — the name reaching the parish books garbled as "Hentriett Belderk" — childless through twenty-seven years of marriage, prayed to Our Lady of this church, were granted a child, and gave generously toward the new building. The jubilee souvenir keeps the same memory in Tamil: within a year a son was born, and their joy passed all measure. It is memory, and this page records it as memory: no printed history we have opened names any benefactor of this church — Auguste Jean credits it to Fr Grégoire's "persevering energy" alone — and Christopher Bilderbeck himself had died in 1817, thirty-eight years before the foundation stone. Whether Besse's unread chronicle records the family's gift is one of the questions his book still holds.
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In English
It is chiefly to his persevering energy that this fine Christian community owes its great church.
What this source establishes
The outside check on the funding tradition: the mission’s own chronicler credits the great church to Fr Grégoire’s persevering energy, and names no lay benefactor anywhere in his two volumes.