USA > Alabama > Memorial record of Alabama. A concise account of the state's political, military, professional and industrial progress, together with the personal memoirs of many of its people. Volume II pt 1 > Part 28
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battle or died from wounds and disease contracted in the army. Many newspapers suspended and all connected with them, capable of serving in the army, entered the Confederate service, for two or three years after the . close of hostilities but few suspended papers were revived. The roll of the Confederate army for Alabama, and all the other southern states, will show that no class of men did more service in the field than those con- nected with the newspaper business. We can call to mind more than one instance, where father and son left their office together, and one or the other and sometimes both were killed. Of the 5,871 publications reported for 1870, the number of dailies was 574; tri-weekly, 107; semi-weekly, 115; weekly, 4,295; semi-monthly, 96; monthly, 622: bi-monthly, 13: and quarterly, 49. In Alabama the total number was 89, against 96 ten years previous. Of these, nine were daily. the same number as in 1860, and the average circulation was 16,420; the tri-weeklies numbered two, with 700 circulation; semi-weeklies two, and circulation 2,870, weeklies, 76, only one less than ten years before and circulation 71,175. The decrease in publica- tion was in the monthly issues. The total of papers established in the United States between 1860 and 1870 was 1,731. Of these sixteen were in Ala- bama. As there were as many dailies in 1860 as in 1870, none of the in- crease can be ascribed to that class of publication. If the sixteen were added to the ninety-six, total of the whole state in 1860, it would make for Alabama 112 publications of all classes in 1870, but the total was only 89. It follows, therefore, that 23 publications of 1860 did not exist in Alabama in 1870. In the census year of 1880, the total number of publications of all kinds in the United States was 11,314, of which 971 were daily; 8.663 weekly; 133 semi-weekly; forty tri-weekly; 1,167 monthly: 160 semi- monthly, 116 tri-monthly and six semi-annually.
In Alabama, the total number was 125. of which six were daily, three morning and three evening, 109 weekly. one tri-weekly, seven monthly and two semi-monthly. Of these. 114 were devoted to politics, general news and miscellany : five were religious, two agricultural, one law and three educational. Of the religious publications three were Baptist. one Episcopal and one Universalist. Of the publications in the United States in 1880, 5.429, about one-half were established in the decade between 1870 and 1880, 1.731 between 1860 and 1570, 903 between 1550 and 1.560, 1216, in all previous years, and 117 with no date given. In Alabama, of the 125 publications in 1550, fifty-three were established between 1570 and 1880, six- teen between 1860 and 1870, five between 1850 and 1860, and only twenty-two prior to 1850. The suspension of papers during the census year 1850. numbered thirteen. There were published in Alabama, during the year 1892, publications of all classes to the number of 198. Of these, sixteen were dailies, published as follows: two in Anniston, two in Eufaula, two in Huntsville, two in Selma, two in Birmingham, two in Tuscaloosa, two in Montgomery and two in Mobile. This shows an increase of ten in twelve years. There were 163 weeklies. Every county has one paper
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and some as many as five. Washington county. the second county in the state in which a paper was established, cime to the front again in 1892, with another, after an interval of about eighty years. The increase in weeklies was from 125 in 1880, to 163 in 1592. There were fifteen monthly publications. most of them small papers devoted to school purposes printed under the auspices of a school. Three or four of them were conducted by teachers in colored institutions. There were four semi-monthly publi- cations.
The number of publications which have been started in the state. other than those whose columns were devoted to the current news of the day and county, state and national politics, is not legion, but very nearly every kind of journal that was known in the world has been tested in Alabama, from the sensationel Hornet, publishel for a very brief period in Birm- ingham, to the Alabama Baptist, published at Montgomery, and the Metho' dist Advocate, published in Birmingham, and the Diocese. published at Montgomery. representing respectively Baptism, Methodism and Episco- palianism. The state seems to have been emulous to give to the world as great a variety of journalism as any other state could boast of. The Southern Law Journal and Reporter. established in Montgomery in the seventies, and probably the only publication of this sort ever undertaken in the state with any degree of success. A medical monthly is published at Anniston. The Howard Collegian, and Normal Reporter. collegiate and educational respectively, were begun in the seventies at Marion, the county seat of Perry county, which has been designated the seat of education in the state. The students of the state university at Tuscaloosa and of the Southern university at Greensboro publish creditable magazines. A paper which possessed some literary merit, and contained many well written articles, was published a few years ago by an inmate of the State Insane hospital. Alabama journalism has had many ups and downs, but more of the latter. Hundreds have sprung up in the various towns and cities of the state whose existence was almost as evanescent as the bloom of the rose.
Those who have read the foregoing pages, can but observe that a great many men who have been active in the affairs of the state and union were at one time connected with the press. Mr. Yancey-whose fame covered two continents -- Mr. Hilliard. Judge Thomas J. Judge. Thaddeus Sanford, John Forsyth, Johnson J. Hooper and others, who achieved national repu- tation, were once active and hard workers on the newspaper tread mill. Two of our present representatives in congress at one time owned and edited papers in Alabama. The newspapers of Alabama to-day will com- pare favorably with those of any state in the union. They are clean and chaste in sentiment. devoted to the best interests of their state and country and becoming more influential daily.
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CHAPTER XI. RELIGIOUS HISTORY. BY THOMAS H. CLARK, MONTGOMERY.
THE PIONEER CHURCH - CATHOLIC CHURCH FROM 1850 TO 1893 - PRO- TESTANT CHURCHES - CAMP MEETINGS - STATISTICAL. - HE CATHOLIC was the pioneer church in Alabama and would have to be first considered in any historical narrative of relig- ious conditions in this state. The priest of that ancient and powerful organization preached the gospel and offered the sacri- -fice of the mass on the banks of the Coosa and the Tombigbee in 1540-eighty years before the Pilgrims touched Plymouth Rock and forty years before the birth of Smith, the founder of Jamestown. Of these priests, who accompanied De Soto's expedition. the name of only one has been preserved, Father John de Galligos. Gulf coast legends, however, indicate that several of the priests who came with De Soto remained among the Indians, one of these romantic legends telling of a priest in Mobile that was lured, at 12 o clock on Christmas night by the mystic music of Pascagoula, to wander forth to trace the source of the phantom sounds. In 1559. Fathers Dominic of the Annuciation, and Segura, two priests of the order of St. Dominic. came with a detail of Spanish soldiers from what is now Pensacola to Cosa on the Coosa. where they celebrated mass in rustic chapels made of boughs, and labored there for the spiritual wellfare of the Spaniards and the Indians. Their labors, however, produced but little if any fruit, and the mission was abandoned in 1560 or 1561.
Nearly a century and a half later. Bienville, under authority from the French government, planted the colony to which the present city of Mobile traces its origin. The colony under his care was located succes- sively, between 1679 to 1711. at Ship Island. Biloxi, Dauphin Island, Dog River, at a point above its present location. and then at its present site. The Rev. Fathers Davion and Bergier, missionaries from Canada, and the Jesuit Fathers Dongre and Du Ru visited, the colonists and ministered to their spiritual needs in the years from 1697 to 1703. Antony Davion was the first missionary in Alabama, and he built the first church in that ter- ritory. He made the first entry in the baptismal register of Mobile: the baptism being that of an Appalachee girl, September 6, 1704. A church
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and priests' house had already been constructed. The site was probably on Dauphin Island, though the precise date of the erection of the build- ings and their location are more or less matters of conjecture.
In 1703, the Bishop of Quebec, in Canada, whose jurisdiction then ex- tended to the Gulf of Mexico, established Mobile as a canonical parish, with Rev. Henry R. de la Vente as first resident pastor and Rev. Alex- ander Huve as assistant. The ancient register in which are recorded the works of the church of this time is still preserved in the Cathedral church at Mobile.
The historian, Pickett, writes disparagingly of Mobile's first parish priest. The censure seems to be undeserved. Writers well informed in Catholic affairs say he was an earnest and zealous pastor, whose public censure of the profligacy of many of the colonists made him enemies, and among these, Bienville, the governor. Father de la Vente returned, to France in 1710. in a dying condition, leaving his assistant, Rev. Alex- ander Huve, in charge of the parish. In 1709 a church was built on Dauphin Island, and about the same time Father Huve erected a chapel ten miles from Mobile, for a band of Appalachee Indians, who had pre- served the Catholic faith, taught them by the early Spanish missionaries. This father's name appears in the church register of Mobile as late as 1721. Worn from labor and almost blind, he returned to France in 1727. He had been noted, especially, for his zealous efforts to convert the In- dians, but his inability to learn the Indian language had rendered his labors partially fruitless. The Catholic historian, Shea, gives, in the words of an early chronicler, a brighter picture of the work of the priests among the Indians, and particularly among the Appalachees. He says, of this tribe, that they were "the only Christian nation that came to the French from the Spanish territory. The Appalachees have public service like the Catholics in France. Their great feast is St. Louis day. The priests of our fort go there to say the high mass, which they hear with much devotion. chanting the psalms in Latin as they do in France, and after dinner, vespers and the benediction of the blessed sacrament. They have a church, * * * a baptismal font in which to baptize their children, and a cemetery adjacent to the church, where they bury their dead."
To note briefly the names of some of the early workers of this period: Rev. Mr. Le Maire was chaplain at the fort on Dauphin Island, between 1708 and 1710; Father John Matthew, of the order of Capuchins, was parish priest at Mobile from 1721 to 1736; Father Charles, a Carmelite, was missionary among the Appalachees in 1721: Father John Francis, and after him Father Ferdinand. Capuchins. members of the society of Jesus and missionaries from France and Canada, were ministers in and around Mobile, in these years, from 1736 to 1763. The Jesuit Fathers, de Guyenne and Le Roi, established missions among the Alabamians, near Fort Toulouse, whilst Fathers LePetit and Boudoin preached to the
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Choctaws. Father Boudoin himself spent eighteen years among the Choctaws.
These missions were broken up when Mobile, with the adjacent coun- try, fell into the hands of the English, and the laws of England, then harsh toward Catholics, were applied to the territory in question.
When Galvez captured Mobile in 1780, a Spanish garrison was placed there, and the public services of the Catholic church were resumed with their former pomp. The parish was named the Immaculate Conception. Fathers Salvador de la Esperanza, Charles de Velez, Francis Notorio and Joseph de Arazena were successively pastors in Mobile from 1781 to 1784. Rev. Constantine McKenna was pastor from 1792 to 1800. He was suc- ceeded by Rev. John Vangois in 1807, and by Rev. Vincent Genin. The latter retired when Spain gave up possession of the territory. Under the rule of Spain, from 1780 to 1812. everything was done that was pos- sible to promote the interests of the church. The king had, in 1789. commanded, by royal decree, that there should be a chaplain stationed on every plantation.
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The United States entered into possession of Mobile, in 1813. In 1825, Rev. Michael Portier, then president of a college in New Orleans, was appointed bishop and vicar apostolic of Alabama and Florida. In the two states, at that time, there were only two priests and three churches. One of these three churches was in Mobile, and this was then the only catholic church in Alabama. This church, itself, was burned in October, 1827. Mass was for a time celebrated in a private house, but, in time, a little frame church, twenty feet by thirty in dimensions, was erected. In 1829, the diocese of Mobile, embracing the state of Alabama and West Florida, was formed with Rt. Rev. Michael Portier, as first bishop. Rev. Fathers Loras and Chalon visited. in 1830. the scattered Catholics in north Alabama and gave missions at Montgomery, Tuscaloosa, Hunts- ville, Moulton and Florence: meantime the bishop and Rev. Mr. Bazin opened Spring Hill college, now one of the foremost educational institu- tions in the south. This college was opened in 1830 and was chartered by the legislature in 1836. Since 1546, this school has been in charge of the members of the society of Jesus, an order whose reputation as educa- tors is as wide as the civilized world. In 1-33, the academy of the Visita- tion for the education of girls and young ladies was opened in Summer- ville, a suburb of Mobile. An orphan asylum for boys and girls was opened in Mobile in 1439, and in 1-41 placed in charge of the Sisters of Charity of Emmittsburg, Maryland. In 1846, the asylum for boys was placed in the care of the Brothers of the Christian Instruction, now known as the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. They also opened a day school for boys and an academy for boarders.
When Bishop Portier died in 1-59. there were in Mobile city five
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priests engaged in parish work, two in Mobile county and one in Mont- gomery; there were in Mobile city the cathedral, a grand structure of which all Mobilians are proud; St. Vincent's and St. Joseph's churches, two asylums for orphans. four day schools with an attendance of 800 pupils, and a boarding school for boys; in Mobile county, six mission churches and three stations where mass was celebrated in private houses, and the academy of the Visitation and Spring Hill college, with a staff of seventeen professors; outside of Mobile county there were churches in Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, and mission stations at other points, viz. : Selma, Huntsville. Decatur, Moulton and Florence. There were also two priests and three churches in west Florida, which forms a part of the diocese of Mobile. In 1827, there was only one church (a frame structure 20x30) in Alabama, and Bishop Portier was the only Catholic clergyman in the state.
After the death of Bishop Portier, the pope appointed Rev. John Quin- lan, a priest of the diocese of Cincinnati, second bishop of Mobile. He was consecrated in New Orleans. December 4. 1839, and was installed in the cathedral, Mobile, on the eighth of the same month. The next year, the bishop visited and traveled in Europe, to obtain missionaries for the diocese. He had scarcely returned to the diocese, when the civil war swept over the land, making it impossible for him to carry out his pro- jects for the extension of the church's work. Some of the priests were sent to the front to minister to the soldiers on the field of battle. After the battle of Shiloh. the bishop himself ministered to the wounded of both armies. During his administration, from December, 1859, to March, 1883, churches were built at Camden, Selma, Huntsville, St. Florian, Hanceville, Pollard, Brewton, Tuscumbia, Decatur, Cullman, Birming- ham, Eufaula, Anniston, Brierfield. Chastangs. Gadsden and Pratt Mines, Warrior, Whistler, Toulmonville. Montrose. Battles, Cottage Hill. Con- vents and schools were opened in Mobile in St. Vincent's parish by the Sisters of Charity, in St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's parishes by the Sisters of St. Joseph. and in the Cathedral parish a large school for boys was built, at a cost of $25,000. Convents and schools were opened in Montgomery by the Sisters of Loretto (1973), in Birmingham by sisters of the same order. in Selma by the ladies of the Sacred Heart. in Tuscaloosa by Ursuline Sisters. Cullman, by the Sisters of the Notre Dame, and in Tuscumbia by Sisters of St. Benediet.
In 1880, the Jesuit Fathers were placed in charge of the church at Selma, and in 1981, priests of the order of St. Benedict were given charge of twelve counties in the northern part of the state. At the death of Bishop Quinlan in 1883, twenty-five priests were engaged in parochial work within the limits of Alabama, and thirteen in teaching in Spring Hill college. There were thirty churches, fourteen day schools and twelve convents and academies, one infirmary and two orpahn asylums. The Catholic population was estimated at 14,000.
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Rt. Rev. Dominic Manucy became the third bishop of the diocese. A native of Florida. and a graduate of Spring Hill college, he was ordained · priest in Mobile by Bishop Portier in the year 1:50. As priest he labored at the Cathedral and St. Vincent's church, Mobile. and was pastor of the church in Montgomery from 1864 to 1874. In this year, he was conse- crated bishop in Mobile and proceeded immediately to Texas, where he organized the vicarate apostolic of Brownsville. Ten years later in (1884), he was recalled to Mobile and became its third bishop. His ten years' service in Texas had undermined his health and within a year in answer to his repeated requests he was allowed to resign. During his brief administration, he effected much for the welfare of the church. He introduced the Sisters of Mercy into St. Joseph's parish. Mobile. largely diminished a diocesan debt which had long burthened the dio- cese and devised and introduced the economic system which in a short time freed the diocese from debt. He died in Mobile, December 4, 1885, and was buried in the Cathedral.
His last appearance in the Cathedral was November 1, 1885, when he introduced to the congregation and to the Catholics of the diocese, his successor Rt. Rev. Jeremiah O'Sullivan, who had been consecrated bishop on the 20th of September of that year. Bishop O'Sullivan before going to Mobile had been a priest of the diocese of Baltimore where he served during eighteen years. Since his advent to the diocese ten churches have been built in Alabama, a college has been opened at Cull- man and four priests have been ordained.
The three bishops of Mobile, who have been called to render an account of their stewardship were men of marked ability. widely known and universally esteemed. Among the deceased priests were many zeal- ous and distinguished men. Father Loras, the first president of Spring Hill college and Father Bazin, his successor, Fathers Pellicier and Manucy, both so well known and loved in Montgomery, were called to rule dioceses in other states. Father Ryan, the poet priest, was assistant at the Cathedral and pastor of St. Mary's church, Mobile.
The chairty, zeal and pure lives of the religious sisterhoods of the Catholic church. give her influence and command the reverence of men in every part of the state. Spring Hill college and the academy of the Visitation are the two senior educational institutions in the state-St. Bernard's college. Cullman is the junior.
The Catholic directory, for 1893, gives the following summary as rep- resenting the state of the Catholic church in Alabama.
One bishop, thirty-two priests engaged in parochial work and twelve priests teaching in colleges; six brothers of the Sacred Heart teaching in parish schools, and eight caring for orphans in the male asylum; forty members of female religious communities teaching in academies and parish schools and twelve sisters engaged in nursing the sick.and caring for orphan girls. Convents are established in Mobile, Montgom-
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ery, Birmingham, Cullman, Selina and Tuscumbia. There are two col- leges and four female academies and eighteen parish schools with an average attendance of 1.900 pupils. The Catholic population of Ala- bama is estimated at 16,000. The Cathedral in Mobilc is said to be the finest church building in the south. A new church in course of erection in Birmingham will cost 880,000, a proof that the church has kept up with the growth of the magic city. The Catholic church has seen many vicissitudes of civil rule since the days of Bienville. From its begin- ning here, two centuries ago, counting from the French settlement. France, England, Spain. the United States and the Confederate States have held sway in Alabama. These political, changes have influenced the personnel of the church elergy and retarded her growth; they have not changed her faith or her discipline.
The Catholic church has played so great a role in history. it is natural that her bishops, her priests, her servants of every kind, should feel a pride in her past and try to preserve every record that illustrates the growth and influence of that mighty organization. In Alabama, at least, it has been different with the Protestants. who have had the opportunities to give to the world permanent records of church organizations that have swayed even more powerfully the course of events in the new world than in the old. The chronicler. who would write in detail of the Protestant churches in Alabama, has no enviable task before him. He must drudge and he must dig and after all must rest content with an insubstantial handful of facts about the various Protestant denominations.
PROTESTANT CHURCHES.
The Methodists and Baptists, of course, in Alabama, as elsewhere in the south and west. were the great forerunners of other churches. The first historical record, however, and a most quaint one it is, relates to the Episcopal ministry and it antedates by many years the time when Methodist and Baptist preachers began to penetrate the almost unbroken wilderness, to preach the gospel. The record referred to is the "Account of West Florida: made in 1766," by the Rev. Charles Wood- mason, the original of which is preserved among the Fulham MSS. Mr. Woodmason thus describes the religious outlook at Mobile, so far as his church was concerned, at that time:
"Mobile is a fort, seated on a river of that name, distant, at its mouth. sixty miles from Pensacola and lyes about forty miles from the river's mouth. Here is a chapel in the fort. but no chaplain. . The inhabitants (copying after the pattern set them by their principal-a dissolute gov. ernor) are strangers to the paths of virtue and sunk in dissoluteness and dissipation. No forms of government are yet fixed on or carried into execution, whereby numbers who went there to settle have been ruined or have retreated to the French settlement of New Orleans. A
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person who calls himself a clergyman patrols about this place and offici- ates occasionally. But if he is one, they say he is such a disgrace to the character that they (bad as they are) hold him in detestation. This was the place to which Mr. Harte (now lecturer of St. Michael's, Charleston) was destined and which he visited. but he found both place and people too disagreeable. to be preferred to so agreeable a situation as he now enjoys. Mr. Harte was there when the general congress with the Indians was held. and at their departure, he gave them a sermon. The interpreter explaining his words to them sentence by sentence. The Indian chief was very attentive. and after dinner asked Mr. Harte where this great Warrior, God Almighty, which he talked so much of, lived; and if he was a friend of his brother George, over the great water? Mr. Harte then expatiated on the Being of God and his attributes. But could not instil any sentiments into the Indian, or bring him to any, the least, comprehension of matters. and dwelt so long on the subject as to tire the patience of the savage. who at length took Mr. Harte by the hand with one of his, and filling out a glass of rum with the other, concluded with saying. 'Beloved man. I will always think well of this friend of ours, God Almighty, whom you tell me so much of, and so let us drink his health,' and then drank off his glass of rum."
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