Angelico Chavez, O.F.M. (April 10, 1910 – March 18, 1996), was an Hispanic American Friar Minor, priest, historian, author, poet and painter. "Angelico" was his pen name; he also dropped the accent marks from this name. Early life Born the first of ten children to Fabián Chávez and María Nicolasa Roybal de Chávez in Wagon Mound, New Mexico, Chavez was baptized with the name Manuel Ezequiel. He was a 12th-generation New Mexican, whose family had been in the area since the first Spanish settlement of 1598. In 1912, his family moved to San Diego, California, where his father worked for the Panama-California Exposition. The missions he was exposed to in California inspired him to follow in the footsteps of Junípero Serra and the other missionaries to the Native Americans. Education Returning to New Mexico, Chavez attended public schools in Mora, staffed by members of the Sisters of Loretto. In 1924, at the age of 14, Chavez was admitted to St. Francis Seminary in Mount Healthy, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. While at the seminary, Chavez endeavored to improve his English (his second language) through a study of the classic literature of the language. He began writing fiction, essays, and other works at this time, several of which were published in the Brown and White, the student magazine he later edited. As a member of the first class to inhabit the seminary's new dormitory, Chavez was allowed to paint murals of Francis of Assisi and Anthony of Padua on its walls. On August 15, 1929, Chavez was received in the novitiate of the Friars Minors and received the Franciscan habit. Due to his potential as a visual artist, he was given the religious name "Frater Angélico" after the Dominican priest and painter Fra Angelico from Florence. He continued his studies at Duns Scotus College in Detroit, graduating in 1933. He studied for four more years before being ordained in 1937 at Saint Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe, the first native New Mexican Franciscan priest. However, in April 1914, two young women from Nacimiento, New Mexico, Elsira Montoya and Dolores Lucero, first-cousins, entered the Franciscan order at St. Louis, Missouri. They spent the remaining 70 and 75 years of their lives as Franciscan nuns. Priesthood Chavez was assigned to the parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Peña Blanca and its missions in Jémez Pueblo and Los Cerrillos. At Peña Blanca, he