USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The story of the Irish in Boston, together with biographical sketches of representative men and noted women > Part 11
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thousand men. In Meagher's brigade was the Twenty-eighth Regiment. They charged in the same manner, but their desperate valor only carried them nearer to the deadly stone-wall. No organized body of men could ever reach it, for the enemy were so thick behind it that " each one at the wall had two or three behind him to load muskets and hand them to him, while he had only to lay them flat across the wall and fire them." Generals Couch and . Howard, observing from a steeple, saw this fighting,1 and Howard could not suppress a cry of agony as he saw the brave men drop.
The best testimony for our famous countrymen is from the pen of their foes. We quote from First-Lieut. William Miller Owen :2 " In the foremost line we distinguished the green flag with the golden harp of old Ireland, and we knew it to be Meagher's Irish brigade. The gunners were directed to turn their guns against this column, but the gallant enemy pushed on beyond all former charges, and fought and left their dead within five and twenty paces of the sunken road."
In spite of all the daring and death, the attempt failed to make any impression on the well-managed army of Confederates, and out of Hancock's brave five thousand that started on the charge, three thousand retired at the end of fifteen minutes, leaving their comrades where they fell.
After one or two more of these frantic efforts to carry the posi- tion by storm, Burnside gave it up, and during the night withdrew to the other side of the river. Shortly afterward Hooker superseded him, and attempted to get around Lee's position and take him from the rear. He began the battle of Chancellorsville by a brilliant
1 " I had never before seen fighting like that. Nothing approaching it in terrible uproar and destruction. There was no cheering on the part of the men, but a stubborn determination to obey orders and do their duty. I don't think there was much feeling of success. As they charged, the artillery fire would break their formation and they would get mixed; then they would close up, go forward, receive the withering infantry fire, and those who were able would run to the houses and fight as best they could, and then the next brigade coming up in succession would do its duty and melt like snow coming down on warm ground."-General Couch, in "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," vol. iii., p. 113.
2 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. iii., p. 98.
COL. PATRICK T. HANLEY.
الـ
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strategic movement, which was soon neutralized by his vacillating and incompetent generalship; and "Fighting Joe," after making a poor defensive battle, retired, beaten like his predecessor, though not quite so badly. His old-time energy soon returned, however, and he detected and followed up the attempted invasion of the North, which culminated at Gettysburg. Resenting the meddlesome and injurious dictation of Halleck, the commander-in-chief, he asked to be relieved of his command. Meade was appointed in his place, and led the army to the field which turned out to be the Waterloo of the Rebellion.
The Ninth was at this battle, though not actively engaged ; they lost one killed and three wounded while on skirmish duty. The Irish brigade had lost their old commander, and now followed Col. Patrick Kelley. The Twenty-eighth, after many forced marches, took up a position with this brigade on the left of Ceme- tery Hill, early on the second day of the battle, and in this position line of battle was formed, and maintained until 4 o'clock P.M., at which time the regiment moved forward and engaged the enemy, who were strongly posted on the crest of a rocky hill. The Twenty-eighth went over the top of this hill and almost to the bottom of the other side, being the whole time exposed to a heavy and concentrated musketry fire and losing many men. The enemy were on both flanks, and caused our men to retire a short distance for support. During this engagement and the following one next day, the regiment lost in killed, wounded, and missing one hundred and one men.
The Confederacy received its death-blow at Gettysburg, and the Army of the Potomac soon found itself on old battle-fields. Our two Irish regiments took part in various minor engagements till the army went into winter quarters in the fall of 1863.
In February of the next year, Grant took command of the armies of the United States, and thirteen months afterward the war finished, and the great and good Lincoln had gone to his rest. On the 3d of May, Grant crossed the Rapidan southward and plunged into the Wilderness, -a tract of deserted mining territory, densely
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wooded and uninhabited. Lee, for once, took the offensive, doubt- less expecting to surprise his opponent; but Grant was awake, and the "murdering match " in the jungle left him in first-rate fighting and marching condition.
It was in the first day's fight in the Wilderness that Colonel Guiney was wounded in the eye by a minie-ball, and the com- mand of the Ninth devolved upon Lieutenant-Colonel Hanley during the remainder of the battle. The Twenty-eighth was there, too. On the first day they lost sixteen killed, sixty-seven wounded, and fifteen missing. Here gallantly fell Lieut. James McIntire and Capt. Charles P. Smith. They lost also on the last days of the battle, though not so heavily.
Grant moved "by the left flank " from this time forward, and Lee never fought except defensively thereafter. It was a race for Richmond, and Lee got in first; but there was a steady fight all the way. The Ninth was in it up to Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864. They lost in this series of engagements Captains James W. Macnamara and William A. Phelan, and Lieutenants Nicholas C. Flaherty, James O'Neill, Archibald Simpson, and Charles B. McGinniskin.
The Twenty-eighth stayed nearly through the war. In a daring charge at Cold Harbor they lost Colonel Byrnes. June 16 finds them at Petersburg, charging on and over the first line of works, until stopped by the superior force of the enemy.
This regiment was the last to leave the intrenchments at the fiercely contested battle of Reams's Station, August 25. They were on this occasion publicly complimented for gallant conduct by the division commander, Gen. Nelson A. Miles. Their losses for the year 1864 were, in killed, wounded, and missing, four hundred and five.
The time of enlistment for many of this regiment expired early in 1865, and Colonel Cartwright returned to Boston with them. The remainder were organized into the Twenty-eighth Battalion of Mas- sachusetts Volunteers. Lieut .- Col. James Fleming led them on March 25, 1865, in an attack on Petersburg, Va. The enemy ad- vanced to meet the attack and were twice repulsed. On this occa-
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sion the battalion remained under fire until all its ammunition had been expended. In this engagement Lieutenant-Colonel Fleming, Capt. John Conners, Capt. Patrick McIntyre, and First-Lieut. T. J. Parker were killed. There were also seven men killed and sixty-five wounded out of two hundred taken into action.
The last fight of any moment made by the battalion was at South Side Railroad, under the command of Capt. P. H. Bird, on April 3, 1865. They were in at the surrender of Lee, and formed part of the grand review at Washington.
THE
CATHOLIC CHURCH IN BOSTON.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN BOSTON.
A BOOK devoted to the history of the Irish race in Boston would be ludicrously incomplete without a sketch of that Church to which, at least, four-fifths of the Irish in their own land, or other- where scattered, belong. The loyalty of the Catholic Irish to their faith is a proverb; and in New England, especially, "Irish " and " Catholic" are, for all practical purposes, convertible terms. In- deed, humanly speaking, the strength and importance of the Cath- olic Church in these parts to-day are due to the influx of the Irish element, and to the large and attractive personalities of the Irishmen who became prominent in her episcopate and priesthood. It remains, therefore, but to outline Catholic progress, as a whole, in Boston.
The first Catholic ever to set foot in Boston was, doubtless, the Jesuit missionary, the Rev. Gabriel Druillettes. He had been a success- ful missionary among the Abnaki Indians in Maine. In 1650, Canada: being anxious to open a free intercolonial trade and association, for- mutual defence against the Iroquois, with New England, Father Druil- lettes was sent in quality of ambassador, so to speak, by the Cana- dian authorities to the governing powers in New England. The Jesuit was courteously received by Major-General Gibbons, who gave him a room in his house where he could be free to say his prayers and perform the exercises of his religion. Whence Dr. John Gilmary Shea, in his "History of the Catholic Church in Colonial Days" (Vol. I. of his " Catholic Church in the United States "), thinks we may infer that Father Druillettes celebrated Mass in Boston, Decem- ber, 1650. "At Roxbury," continues Dr. Shea, " he visited Eliot (the Pilgrim missionary to the Indians), who pressed him to remain under his roof until spring." The Jesuit did not prolong his stay. Be it remembered that only three years before, 1647, a law had been
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enacted in New England expelling every Jesuit from the colonies, and dooming him to the gallows if he returned.
A French Protestant refugee, who was in Boston in 1687, found eight or ten Catholics, three of whom were French, the others Irish. None were permanently settled, however, except the surgeon, who was, Dr. Shea thinks, Dr. Le Baron.
From 1711-13, Father Justinian Durant, one of the priests who had tried to labor among the oppressed Acadians in Nova Scotia, was a prisoner in Boston.
In 1775, when Washington took command of the American forces at Cambridge, and forbade the observance of "Pope day," there were evidently a few Catholics permanently located in Boston, Charlestown, and the towns in the vicinity. The Abbé Robin, a French priest, was in Boston in 1781; Father Lacy, an Irish priest, made a short visit to Boston about the same year. The Tories in Boston tried to excite anti-Catholic prejudice in New England against the American cause, on account of the alliance of Congress with France, and in their journals - how history repeats itself! - pub- lished imaginary items, dated ten years ahead, detailing the terrible things which would happen now that " Popery " was suffered to exist.
In 1788 the Boston Catholics, under the direction of Father de la Poterie, a priest from the diocese of Aryen, France, acquired a site of a French Huguenot church on School street, and erected a small brick church, under the title of the Holy Cross. The Archbishop of Paris, on an appeal from the French Catholics in Boston, sent to the little church a needed outfit. There was, however, scant spiritual comfort for the Catholics in Boston till 1790, when Bishop Carroll sent them Father John Thayer, a native of Boston, who had been converted while travelling in Europe, received into the church in Rome in 1783, and ordained about three years later. When he took charge of his Boston flock he found it numbered about one hundred - French, Irish, and Americans.
Bishop Carroll visited Boston for the first time in the spring of 1791, to heal the division made in the little congregation by the dis- edifying French priest, Rousselet. The Bishop was courteously
MOST REV. JOHN J. WILLIAMS. ARCHBISHOP OF BOSTON.
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received by Bostonians generally, and, having been invited to the annual dinner of " The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company," pronounced the thanksgiving at the close of the banquet.
Catholic growth in Boston was greatly quickened by the advent thither, in 1792, of the Rev. Francis A. Matignon, formerly professor in the College of Navarre, France, and experienced among English Catholics. He was joined, four years later, by his friend and country- man, the Rev. John Cheverus, like himself a refugee from the French revolution. These two priests, by their exemplary lives, unwearied devotion to the duties of their office, profound learning, kindliness, and tact, disarmed, by degrees, the prejudice and suspicion with which all things Catholic were regarded in Boston. The sermons of Father Cheverus attracted crowds of Protestants. His devotion to his fellow-citizens, - whose nurse and spiritual consoler he became, with- out distinction of race or creed, -when the yellow-fever scourge visited Boston, completed his victory.
The Legislature of Massachusetts were preparing the formula of an oath to be taken by all the citizens of the State before voting at elections ; but, fearing it might contain something objectionable to the Catholic conscience, they submitted it to Father Cheverus, accepted his revision, and enacted it into a law.
In 1799 the Catholics felt the need of a new church. A sub- scription list was opened, which John Adams, President of the United States, headed with a generous offering. James Bullfinch, Esq., drew the plans, and declined remuneration therefor. On St. Patrick's day, 1800, ground was broken on the site acquired on Franklin street.
The same year, however, witnessed a revival of the old anti- Catholic spirit, and Father Cheverus was prosecuted by Attorney- General Sullivan on the charge that he had violated the law, which was held to permit his ministrations only in Boston, by marrying two Catholics in Maine. Judges Bradbury and Strong were especially hostile to Father Cheverus; but Judge Sewall, grandfather, we be- lieve, of Samuel Sewall, the eminent abolitionist, lately deceased, was unprejudiced. The pillory and a fine were threatened; Bradbury would have the law carried out to the letter; but he was thrown from
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his horse and prevented from attending court, and the Attorney- General was absent when the case was reached. The prosecution lapsed.
In 1803 Bishop Carroll came on and dedicated the Church of the Holy Cross, assisted by Doctors Matignon and Cheverus. The late Hon. E. Hasket Derby presented this church with a bell from Spain. His son, the famous oculist, Dr. Hasket Derby, became.a Catholic, and is a devoted attendant at the Cathedral. The bell is in the mortuary chapel at Holyhood.
The humble and unpromising beginnings of the Church in Boston have been dwelt on thus minutely only for the sake of con- trast with its magnificent development of to-day, - a development which sets it in the front rank of American Catholic Sees, - second only in numerical strength, riches, enterprise, and last, but far from least, steadfast faith and loyalty of religious spirit, to the great See of New York itself.
In 1808 Pope Pius VII. erected four new Episcopal Sees in the United States, one of which was Boston, with Doctor Cheverus as first bishop. He was consecrated in Baltimore, by Archbishop Carroll, Nov. 1, 1810. Bishop Cheverus established a little theolog- ical seminary under his own roof for candidates for the priesthood, and founded an Ursuline Convent in Boston for the education of young girls. Boston's second Catholic parish - St. Augustine's, South Boston - was created by Bishop Cheverus. In 1823 his failing health obliged him to return to his native France, where he became successively Bishop of Montauban and Cardinal Archbishop of Bor- deaux, dying in 1836. His departure from Boston was mourned as much by Protestants as by Catholics. A Protestant lady, Mrs. John Gore, had his portrait painted by Gilbert Stuart. This portrait, now the property of Mrs. Horatio Greenough, adorns the Boston Art Museum. During his administration many converts were received into the Church, members of the most distinguished New England families.
Bishop Cheverus was succeeded in the diocese of Boston by the Rt. Rev. Joseph Benedict Fenwick, a lineal descendant of Cuthbert
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Fenwick, one of the Catholic pilgrims who helped Lord Baltimore to found the colony of Maryland. Irish immigrants poured into Boston during his episcopate, and the Irish priests followed their people. Churches and schools multiplied.
Bishop Fenwick's first care in Boston was to remove the Ursuline nuns from their crowded and unhealthy quarters in the city to a fine estate in Charlestown. He next enlarged the Cathedral by an addition, seventy by forty. Ample space was afforded in the basement for school-rooms, which were soon filled by earnest and intelligent boys, whose studies were directed by the ecclesiastical students of the diocese. At this time Bishop Fenwick had but one priest in the city to share his labors, - the Rev. P. Byrne, a native of Kilkenny, Ireland. He came to this country at an early age, and was ordained in Boston, by Bishop Cheverus, in .1820. With the Rev. Denis Ryan, also a native of Kilkenny, and ordained for the diocese of Boston by Bishop Cheverus, he rendered inestimable services during the infancy of the Church in New England. He was the pastor of St. Mary's Church, Charlestown, from 1830 till 1843. Later, he had pastoral charge of New Bedford and the island of Nantucket. He died Dec. 4, 1844, and, according to his request, was buried in St. Augustine's Cemetery, South Boston. Father Ryan labored in the Maine missions of the vast diocese, and his name will always be tenderly associated with Catholic beginnings in Whitefield and Damariscotta.
In 1827 Bishop Fenwick officiated at his first ordination, the candidates being the Revs. James Fitton and William Wiley. The former spent many fruitful years as a missionary among the Indians in Maine, and later built up the church in East Boston. He has left valuable records of Catholic beginnings and growth in his " Sketches of the Establishment of the Church in New England."
Under Bishop Fenwick's administration the Church of St. Augustine, South Boston, built in 1819 for a mortuary chapel, was enlarged to accommodate the Catholics, who were growing very numerous in its neighborhood. Its successive pastors have been the Revs. Thomas Lynch, 1833-1836; John Mahony, 1836, till his death,
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in 1839; Michael Lynch, 1839-40; Terence Fitzsimons, 1840-44. The new and beautiful St. Augustine's of our own day was built by the Rev. Denis O'Callaghan, who became its first pastor. It was dedicated in 1874, and consecrated in 1884. Father O'Callaghan is of Irish birth, but resided in Boston since his seventh year (1848). He is a zealous priest and a well-known advocate of the legislative independence of his native land. The splendid church, free of debt, and the spacious schools under way, speak more eloquently for him and his people than a volume of praising words. The old cemetery, in which the pioneer Catholics of Boston are buried, is a shrine of historic interest and of reverent pilgrimage. Among the graves of the pioneer priests we find that of the Rev. John Mahony, men- tioned above among the pastors of St. Augustine's. He was born in the County Kerry, Ireland, in 1781. After his ordination and advent to America he spent six years on the Maryland missions, eight on those of Virginia, and thirteen in the Boston diocese.
In 1834 Bishop Fenwick founded St. Mary's parish, North End, Boston. The church was entirely completed and dedicated May 22, 1836. The following priests were successively in charge: the Revs. William Wiley, P. O'Beirne, Michael Healy, Thomas J. O'Flaherty, John B. Fitzpatrick, and Patrick Flood, till 1847, when it was placed in charge of the Jesuits.
In 1832 Bishop Fenwick introduced into Boston the Sisters of Charity, from Emmittsburg, Md. The " foundation-sisters," as we may call them, were the famous Sister Anne Alexis and her companions, Sisters Blandina and Loyola. The first-named was for nearly fifty years a noted personage in Boston, a woman of attractive personality, rare culture, and great executive ability, and beloved by both Cath- olics and Protestants. The Sisters of Charity, though of French institution, were founded in the United States by an American con- vert, Mrs. Elizabeth Seton, and have attracted an immense Irish- American membership. Their late Mother-General for the United States was Mother Mary Euphemia Blenkinsop, a native of Dublin, Ire., and sister to the present rector of the Church of SS. Peter and Paul, South Boston. Her successor is a lady of Irish ancestry, -
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Mother Mariana Flynn. It is not wholly irrelevant to mention here that the present directress of the famous academy of the Sisters of Charity at Emmittsburg, Sister Lucia, is a Boston lady. These sisters have now under their charge in Boston : St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum for Girls, Camden street; the Home for Destitute Catholic Children, Harrison avenue; St. Mary's Infant Asylum, in the Dor- chester District; and the Carney Hospital, South Boston. Among the notable benefactors of the Sisters of Charity in Boston may be named Andrew Carney, who founded the hospital which bears his name, and gave $12,000 to the St. Vincent's Orphanage; and the late Daniel Crowley, a most liberal contributor to all their works.
Another of the old Boston parishes founded by Bishop Fenwick was St. Patrick's, Northampton street, in 1835. So active and virulent was the spirit of Know-nothingism at the time the new church was building, - it was the year following the destruction of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, - that the men of the parish took turns by night in guarding the walls. The church was completed, however, without trouble, and dedicated Dec. 11, 1836. The Rev. Thomas Lynch, one of the most celebrated of the old-time Boston priests, was its pastor from this time until his death, in 1870.
A few words descriptive of Father Tom, of whom it is truly said that he was heroic in soul and body, may be fitly given here from a recent sketch in the " Pilot : " -
He was born in Virginia, County Cavan, in 1800. Piety, patriotism, and love of learning were the very atmosphere of his boyhood's home. His own father was his first instructor in English and Latin, and also in the grand old Gaelic tongue. How capable and successful an instructor may be judged from the fact that the boy at the age of eleven easily translated long passages from Virgil and Horace into Irish. His familiarity with the Irish language was of the greatest service to him in the priesthood years later, as many of the poor Irish immigrants who came to him in Boston for aid or counsel were unversed in any other tongue.
While a student in Maynooth, he volunteered for the American mission, and came to this country in 1830. He stopped in Boston, and Bishop Fenwick was greatly pleased with the fervent young ecclesiastical student. He continued his studies under the bishop's direction, teaching, meanwhile, in the school attached to the Cathedral, and was ordained in 1833. He was a large, strong, and strikingly
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handsome man, and probably the best classical scholar at that time in New England. He was a good preacher, and diligent in devotion to the severe routine work of his large and scattered parish. But his distinguished characteristic - the grand passion of his life - was charity for the poor. At the time of the Irish famine - '46, '47, '48- great numbers of Irish immigrants arrived in Boston, in the most destitute condition. To Father Tom they were at once directed. He fed them, clothed them, counselled them. They slept in the basement of the church till other - shelter could be procured for them ; or until, well equipped for the journey, he could start them on their way to the manufacturing towns of New England or the prairies of the Far West. He always had a store of boots and shoes in his house, and kept many hands busy making up clothes for the immigrant women and chil- dren. Not until the Day of Judgment will it be known what a multitude of souls owe their perseverance in the faith, and their eternal salvation, to Father Tom's unbounded charity. Nor was his solicitude for the resident poor less minute and comprehensive. He cared little for splendid buildings; but much for drawing the hearts of the worn-out old laborer, the poor widow or orphan, to the love of God, by relieving in God's name their material sufferings. The needy never left his house with empty hands.
A nephew of Father Lynch's, the Rev. Hugh P. Smyth, is the present rector of St. Joseph's Church, Roxbury. He is noted as a church-builder, having erected, in whole or part, about twenty-five churches during less than as many years in the priesthood.
The successor of Father Lynch at St. Patrick's was the Rev. Joseph N. Gallagher, who built the beautiful new church on Dudley . street, and the parochial school, so well conducted by Sisters of Charity, from Halifax, N.S. Under his pastorate the church cele- brated last year its semi-centenary. Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Williams, all the bishops of the New England province, and a great number of priests, attended the impressive commemoration.
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