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Go 974.6 C768t v.3 298063
PUBLIC LIBRARY FORT WAYNE & ALLEN CO., IND.
M. L
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01149 2987
ANNEX
- 2 1
6733
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
QUI
SUSTINET
TRANSTULIT
COMMITTEE ON
HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
XLI The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut AUSTIN FRANCIS MUNICH
PUBLISHED FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1935
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
XLI The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut
AUSTIN FRANCIS MUNICH I 298063 T is well known that, in its early religious history, the colony of Connecticut was thoroughly Protes- tant in origin, sentiment, and persuasion, but it is not so well known that Congregationalism was organized in town and in state as an established church. There was some degree of union of church and state in Connecticut from the opening years of the colony onward into statehood up to the year 1818. That there should have appeared any Roman Catholicism at all in such a territory where Puritan membership in the established church was almost a prerequisite for the exercise of civic privileges is a matter of surprise.
The beginnings of the Roman Catholic Church in Con- necticut differed from the origins of the same church in such states as Maryland, where English Catholics were the original settlers; as Michigan, Missouri, and Louisi- ana, where the earliest inhabitants were French Catholics; as Florida, California, and New Mexico, where the earliest settlers were Catholic missionaries sent in the wake of the
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Spanish explorers. The religious situation in Connecticut differed radically from that encountered in the states formed from the Northwest Territory and the Louisiana Purchase, territories which were mainly settled after there had been written into the Constitution of the United States the bill of rights whereby "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This opportunity for equal religious liberty did not exist in Connecticut where the condition was that of an established church, a Standing Order, a Puritan tradition that had grown up with the government and templed the hills with Congregational meeting houses. A history of almost two hundred years of Puritan régime preceded the purchase of the first Roman Catholic church within the state. Thus the beginnings of Catholicism in Connecticut were against formidable odds in priority of time and in priority of time-strengthened misconceptions of what Catholicism really was. Rarely, if ever, did the Connecticut Yankee see a Catholic. Rarely, if ever, was his information of Catholicism first-hand. Even as late as the nineteenth century there were whole communities that had never laid eyes on a Catholic priest.
Although the English immigrants to Connecticut were victims of persecution in England, they themselves lapsed into intolerance when clothed with power in the New World. Their intentions may have been very sincere, based as they were on a theology of divine predestination and human depravity, and exemplified in the severity of their moral code and the length of their church services. Yet their severity of mind towards those who held reli- gious opinions contrary to their own appears, in our back- ward glance from this age, as an unwarranted trait of a new religion in a supposedly free land. The Standing Order of Congregationalism became the dominant party
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and by means of the civil power which they held caused those who differed from them to feel the weight of their Calvinistic laws. It was not an unusual colonial occur- rence for persons to be taken into custody, brought to trial, and fined because they attempted to go to a reli- gious meeting that was not such as met the approval of the Standing Order. Evidence of Catholic settlement within the colony is rare, but not so rare are the profuse pronouncements in personal letters and official state and church documents that the presence of Catholics was both undesirable and proscribed.
It is interesting to consider the viewpoint of a modern Englishman on the Puritan tradition. "Multitudes of people in England and America think of the Mayflower as an origin or archetype. Perhaps it would be an exaggera- tion to say that they think the Mayflower discovered America. They do really talk as if the Mayflower popu- lated America. Above all, they talk as if the establish- ment of New England had been the first formative example of the expansion of England. They believe that English expansion was a Puritan experiment; and that an expansion of Puritan ideas was also the expansion of what have been claimed as English ideas, especially ideas of liberty. The Puritans of New England were champions of religious freedom, seeking to found a newer and freer state beyond the sea, and thus becoming the origin and model of modern democracy. All this betrays a lack of exactitude. Such a Mayflower is not merely a fable, but is much more false than fables generally are. The revolt of the Puritans against the Stuarts was really a revolt against religious toleration. I do not say the Puritans were never persecuted by their opponents; but I do say, to their great honor and glory, that the Puritans never descended to the hypocrisy of pretending for a moment
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that they did not mean to persecute their opponents. And in the main their quarrel with the Stuarts was that the Stuarts would not persecute those opponents enough."1 Thus Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the British publicist, succinctly punctures one of the widely current miscon- ceptions of Puritanism.
Although it was not until 1829 that the first priest resided in Connecticut, previous to that date there had been visits of Catholic clergymen to various towns of the state. As early as 1651 the Reverend Gabriel Druillettes, S. J., came to New Haven as an envoy from New France to effect agreements with the colonial authorities. How- ever, neither trade nor military pacts resulted from the ambassadorial visit.
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OVER one hundred years later the French Neutrals from Acadia constituted the first importation of Catholics in considerable numbers into the colony. The cruel and inhuman evacuation of Nova Scotia was carried out by order of the British government and instructions were sent to deport a certain proportion of these French in- habitants to Connecticut. These exiles were anything but welcome in New England; their support was an uninvited burden and their presence, by reason of national and religious animosity, was a vexation to say the least. Four hundred of the unfortunates were dispatched to the colony and distributed to fifty different towns. In receiv- ing these innocent victims, the colonial assembly evi- denced a humanitarian spirit in directing their support as though they were inhabitants of such towns and in assigning them to townships so that no one family of them be separated. Some towns extended the hand of
IG. K. Chesterton, Fads and fancies, Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1923.
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human fellowship while others violated the letter and spirit of the assembly's resolution. In every case the tiny nucleus of French Neutrals experienced a bitter exile from relatives, priestly ministrations, and homeland.
Irish names occur early in the town records of Con- necticut. The list of settlers in New Haven from the year 1639 to 1645 contains twenty-one names that link asso- ciation with the Emerald Isle. The Reverend James H. O'Donnell in his History of the diocese of Hartford gives a compilation of Irish names up to the year 1805. It is not easy to establish with certainty the immediate Catholic ancestry of these early settlers since there were also among the immigrants Protestants from the North of Ireland. Following the Cromwellian settlement of Ire- land, shiploads of Irish men and women were deported to the British possessions in order that they might be used in the development of the natural resources of the colo- nies. From the southern counties this was an enforced deportation and some victims of this compulsory plan were transported to Connecticut as indentured servants.
The voluntary migration of Irish Catholics began in 1762. At that time no recourse remained to the peasantry but emigration. Their arrival in the American plantations in the period immediately preceding the Revolutionary War had no tendency to diminish or counteract the hos- tile sentiments against Britain which were daily gathering force in America. Connecticut, however, was not too hospitable an outlook for the incoming Irishman.
Even the Scotch-Irish from the North were the objects of discrimination and aversion. In 1722 some residents of Voluntown protested against Samuel Dorrance, an Irish- born Presbyterian minister, as responsible for bringing unwholesome Irish inhabitants into the region. Yet in the era of the struggle for independence from the mother
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country, the Irish, irrespective of their creed, were wel- comed into the ranks of the volunteer army.
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IT is one of the strange facts of history that the Revolu- tionary War served as an instrument to purge the body politic in the American colonies of anti-Catholic bigotry. France, particularly, was the purging leaven. The France of 1780 was a nation officially Catholic, with its monarch and the majority of its population professing that faith. When that country espoused our cause, it sent generals and infantry, munitions and money, supplies and fleets. Without the cooperation of that rich ally, the Revolution could hardly have been a success.
Congregational Connecticut experienced a broadening contact when four thousand eight hundred French sol- diers, besides fifty-four officers, participated in the marches through the state. Up to this time Catholics were despised as idolaters and inferiors; but when the well-disciplined French troops camped here, marched into the towns, distributed their silver in exchange for services, and traversed the state in the final campaign, the townsmen first came into contact with adherents of that creed in large numbers. The arrival of these troops in Connecticut was an important event in opening the eyes of the puri- tanical settlers to view Catholicism as it really was in the living.
Rochambeau's army was described by witnesses as magnificent in appearance and superb in discipline. The soldiers committed no acts of plunder but paid liberally for the supplies furnished them. Their encampment in ten towns of the state was characterized by generosity and cordiality, by culture and good breeding. The gay nature of the French staged several picnic parties and
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dances on town greens, thereby interspersing the hard- ships of war with enjoyment of innocent recreation.
For six months one thousand infantry and five hundred mounted hussars were encamped at Lebanon, the home of Governor Trumbull. "A gay June for Lebanon was that!" reflected a town historian, "when these six brilliant French regiments with their gorgeous banners and martial bands were daily displayed on this spacious and lovely village green." Besides the long stay at Lebanon, this legion of the Duke of Lauzun made six other encamp- ments within the state.
The names of five army chaplains are recorded among the distinguished members of the French forces. Follow- ing their obligation as priests, they must have offered the sacrifice of the Mass, although the records are annoyingly silent about this great act of worship, so accustomed were the chaplains to fulfill this function of their ministry regularly wherever they were.
In the final march of Rochambeau's forces westward across the states, the arrival in Hartford happened to be on Saturday and arrangements were made to stay over Sunday before continuing the march. Abbé Robin was the chaplain with the troops and on Sunday it was his duty to say Mass so that the soldiers might assist at the holy sacrifice. The service was held in the South Meadows now within the region of Colt Park, near where the Me- morial Church of the Good Shepherd now stands. An eye-witness of this open-air Mass of June, 1781, related the event to one of the early resident priests at Hartford. There is a tradition that this was the first offering of the sacrifice of the Mass in the state of Connecticut.
It is interesting to read what the Marquis de Chastel- lux, a major general in the French army under the Count de Rochambeau, said of the Irish. He made three tours
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through Connecticut on his travels. His observation here and in the Middle Atlantic states led him to remark: "An Irishman, the instant he sets foot on American ground, becomes ipso facto an American; this was uniformly the case during the whole of the late war. On more than one imminent occasion the members of the Continental Con- gress owed their existence and America probably its preservation to the fidelity and firmness of the Irish."
In the Lexington Alarm List from Connecticut, fifty- six Irish names occur. In the regiments of 1775 under Generals Wooster, Spencer, and Putnam, fifty-eight such names occur. Fifty-six Irish names are among those who were transferred from state regiments, subject only to Connecticut control, to Continental regiments under the authority of the Continental commanders. Two hundred and ninety names appear in the nine regiments that com- posed the Connecticut Line which formed with the other State Lines one grand Continental Line. These regiments were raised for continuous service to the end of the war. All Celtic names found in the Record of service of Con- necticut men in the War of the Revolution may not repre- sent Catholics; yet it is indisputable that a goodly number of them do.
For recognition of Catholic participation in the Revo- lutionary War we need but go to the written expressions of the commander-in-chief of the Continental army and the first president of our beloved Union. In his reply to an address from the Roman Catholics of the United States Washington averred, "I presume your fellow citi- zens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their revolution and the establish- ment of their government-or the important assistance which they received from a nation [France] in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed."
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IV
AFTER the Revolutionary War, the Anglican Church in America severed its institutional dependence upon Eng- land and became the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. Dr. Samuel Seabury of Connecticut was chosen the first Episcopalian bishop within the confines of the United States. He had gone to Scotland where he sought and obtained consecration at Aberdeen in 1784 from three bishops in the non-juring succession. The coming to the United States of a bishop claiming spiritual juris- diction over Episcopalian residents in the new republic was the first acceptance and recognition of hierarchy within the thirteen original states. The event served as a precedent for the establishment of a Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States. Before this time the few priests who were laboring in the Atlantic states experi- enced dangers that attended the priestly ministrations among a population largely anti-Catholic, and expressed themselves as fearful whether the United States govern- ment would permit the presence of a bishop in the coun- try. Penal laws were still in force against Romanists in most of the states and the prevailing sentiment could certainly be interpreted as adverse to any episcopal jurisdiction.
The ecclesiastical jurisdiction for Catholic priests was originally dependent upon the vicar apostolic of London inasmuch as the colonies were British territory. In view of the new status of independence, in 1784, the Reverend John Carroll (1735-1815) was appointed by Pope Pius VI as superior of the missions in the United States. In 1789 he was named Bishop of Baltimore, and was conse- crated in the chapel of Thomas Weld at Lulworth Castle, England, by the Right Reverend Charles Walmesley,
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vicar apostolic of London, August 15, 1790. The follow- ing year he appears to have made a passing stop in New London, Connecticut. By strange coincidence here the Episcopalian Bishop Seabury had his church. Thomas Allen, proprietor of the City Coffee House, published the following in the Marine List of 1791: "Sailed, Monday, June 20, Packet Hull for New York, with whom went passenger the Right Reverend Father in God, John, Bishop of the United States of America."
But the Catholicity of Connecticut in 1790, and con- tinuing even through four decades, was an uncemented scattering of inhabitants without church or priest- pioneer families struggling not only to gain an honest livelihood amid post-war depression but also to maintain the faith of their fathers amid unsympathetic neighbors.
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IN Connecticut during the early national period, the Federalist party and Congregationalism went hand in hand. During the decade from 1790 to 1800, there was practically no political life in the modern sense. Elections were not contested. The poll was exceedingly small, for there was no interest which would bring out the elec- torate. The Republican organization and campaign for Jefferson educated the people to use the ballot and not to leave the business of governing to a professional class. Year by year, in the course of organization, the members of the various Protestant sects who were dissatisfied with Congregational state monopoly banded themselves to- gether in the Democratic-Republican party. It was natural for any Catholics in the state to align themselves with this liberal movement. The new party ticket in 1816 was labeled the American Toleration and Reform Ticket. This party was successful in the election of the following
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year when Connecticut cast its heaviest vote and Oliver Wolcott won the governorship. It is probable that nearly every freeman voted, yet in the 26,774 votes cast, only ten per cent of the white inhabitants were represented. This low vote would suggest the number of free residents who, under the existing laws, were disfranchised, for later under full manhood suffrage the total vote approximated twenty per cent of the population.
For the purpose of framing a new state constitution, the general assembly of May, 1818, passed a resolution calling for a constituent convention and requiring the freemen to meet on July 4 to elect in town meeting the usual number of representatives to the convention which was to convene in Hartford on the fourth Wednesday in August. The majority of the representatives chosen were inspired with the purpose of securing toleration, and so were well prepared to draft a constitution which would be acceptable to their people. It is the third section of the bill of rights in the constitution adopted by that body which embodied the desired principle: "The exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination, shall forever be free to all persons in this state; provided, that the right hereby declared and estab- lished shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness, or to justify practices inconsistent with the peace and safety of the state." Section four declared that, "No preference shall be given by law to any Chris- tian sect or mode of worship." Thus the year 1818 brought religious liberty to the formerly Calvinistic common- wealth of Connecticut.
The few Catholics in the state at that time must have supported this movement. It is an historical fact that not until after the adoption of this constitution was there a single Catholic Church in Connecticut or a ministering
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Catholic priest residing within its limits. Like the presi- dential term of Monroe, the new constitution ushered in an Era of Good Feeling. Now the possibility of organiza- tion and growth of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut was no longer a legally handicapped undertaking.
VI
IT fits in chronologically at this time to give an account of the Barber family. The conversion of this family pre- sented a remarkable series of spiritual experiences. Al- though the scenes of these conversions took place beyond Connecticut confines, the family was originally a Con- necticut one which, like many others, had migrated to new surroundings on new ventures. In the town of Sims- bury, the Barber family had been established since the early days of its settlement. In the fourth generation from the American progenitor came Daniel Barber (1756-1834), the great-grandson of the builder of the first Congregational meeting house in Simsbury. He was born and educated in Congregationalism of the strict Puritanic order, which was at that time the prevailing religion in Connecticut. He continued in that faith and worship until he was twenty-seven years of age. The first occur- rence which caused him to examine the grounds of authority in the ministry was a challenge given by a neighboring Episcopalian, alleging that his Congrega- tional minister was destitute of that sacerdotal authority without which no man could be a proper minister of Jesus Christ. As he was taught, Barber believed that one and another, both learned and unlearned, as the case might be, were directly and spiritually called to the work; and that call was of itself a kind of investiture of the sacer- dotal character and office.
The Episcopalian put into Barber's hands a small
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volume containing the most convincing reasonings in support of the Apostolic Order and the succession of the real priesthood. After reading and thinking, he took the book to two Congregational ministers to obtain a refu- tation. No satisfaction resulted. One of the clergymen returned the book with the statement, "There has already been enough said and written on that subject." The other remarked, "Reverend Mr. by rejecting your request, has done the best thing he could; for had he undertaken to interfere with those arguments, he would very soon have brought an old house about his ears." On another occasion, the Episcopalian neighbor succeeded publicly in worsting the Congregational minister by reasoning down the foundation of Congregational ordi- nation and defending the doctrine of apostolic succession. Daniel Barber then began to reflect whether true military characters engaged for their king or country would so tamely suffer their commissions to be trifled with. After a year of reflection, he at length became resolute and bade formal adieu to Congregationalism and entered the Episcopal church.
At the age of thirty Daniel Barber was ordained a deacon by Bishop Seabury in Middletown, Connecticut, and afterwards a priest by Bishop Provoost at Schenec- tady. He married Mrs. Chloe Case, daughter of Judge Owen of Simsbury, and removed to Claremont, New Hampshire, where he was rector of the Episcopal Church, with the provision of a comfortable support, which posi- tion he held for twenty-four years.
It was not until Daniel Barber reached the age of sixty, after long years of service in the Episcopal Church, that doubt and suspicion arose in his mind concerning the correctness and validity of Episcopalian ordination. The occasion was a chance reading of an article concerning the
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history and circumstances of the consecration of Barlow in the reign of Henry VIII. The doubt touched upon a subject keenly felt since the same difficulty had caused his rejection of Congregationalism in his youth. After serious reflection, much reading, and consultation with neighboring ministers and with Bishop Cheverus of Boston, he was finally convinced of the truth of the claims of Rome. At the age of sixty-two, the Reverend Daniel Barber bade farewell to his assembled congrega- tion at Claremont. It was a severe trial to his fine and tender emotions after a service of twenty-four years in peace and harmony. As he spoke for the last time from a Protestant pulpit his texts were from the Apostles' Creed and from St. Paul: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." He spent his remaining years as a devout layman, promoting the Catholic cause. He published a pamphlet, Catholic wor- ship and piety explained and recommended in sundry letters to a very dear friend and others (Washington, 1821), and a narrative, including his participation in the Revo- lutionary War, entitled History of my own times (3 vols., Washington, 1827-1832).
Daniel Barber's entrance into the Catholic Church had been preceded a short time by the conversions to that faith of his sister, Abigail, wife of Noah Tyler; of his son, Virgil; and of other relatives. About this time William Tyler, the son of Abigail and nephew of Daniel Barber, entered a school conducted by his older cousin, Virgil Barber. There a vocation to the priesthood was developed and upon the completion of the scholastic course he went to the home of Bishop Fenwick in Boston where he studied theology under the private tutelage of the bishop. After being ordained to the priesthood, the Reverend William Tyler served at the Boston cathedral and later
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