USA > Maine > The Catholic church in Maine > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32
Maine did not wait until Rome acted to introduce the Mad- awaskans to the American way of life. Fortunately Kavanagh knew a man well qualified for this task: James Cottrill Madi- gan. Kavanagh selected him to establish schools in the Mad- awaska district and to introduce the Madawaskans to American laws and ways of life. It was a happy choice, for this young man, only twenty-three, was the ideal American Catholic lay- man, and he was starting his career, one that would equal that of Edward Kavanagh's, when Kavanagh was nearing his un- timely death. Madigan was another link between the Irish Catholic community on the Damariscotta and the French Catholic community on the St. John. For James Cottrill Madi- gan, born in Damariscotta, was a grandson of Matthew Cottrill.
3 PIONEER PRIESTS AND PROJECTS
HERE WAS a woeful lack of priests in Maine during the first half of the nineteenth century, but there was no lack of color among the few who labored there. This was especially true of the first two priests appointed pastors in Maine. Both were Irishmen, the first Irish-born priests to work in Maine, and they fortunately started their work at the time their country- men were arriving in a steady flow, singly or in small groups. Many of them came into Maine from the British maritime provinces, New Brunswick in particular, as by-products of the timber trade. They secured passage to the provinces on vessels sailing for a cargo of lumber and were free agents after the ship was loaded. Usually they did not tarry long in the British provinces before heading for the States. The more fortunate might obtain a passage on the vessels that visited the Maine ports, like Bristol, but most of them walked and worked their way towards Boston. Some of them decided to settle in the coastal towns visited during this trek, and soon there were clusters of Irish in these towns. Maine's earlier Catholic churches were built where the larger groups of these migrant Irish settled, and the first of these churches were built under the guidance of the two Irish-born priests: Dennis Ryan and Charles Ffrench. These churches are fairly reliable markers of the route from St. John to Boston.
[ 45 ]
46
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN MAINE
1. DENNIS RYAN AND THE SHEEPSCOTT VALLEY (1818-1846)
Father Dennis Ryan was appointed pastor of St. Patrick's in Damariscotta Mills by Bishop Cheverus in October, 1818. He was the first resident pastor in Maine, excepting, of course, the Indian missionaries and Bishop Cheverus who, as we have mentioned, entered into an agreement with the Catholics of Newcastle and Damariscotta to avoid future trouble with the Massachusetts law regulating marriages. Ryan spent nearly a quarter of a century in Maine with his residence in Whitefield, established shortly after his appointment. This was a record that remained long unsurpassed, and when one considers the quick rotation of priests in dioceses like Boston which had to depend on European priests during their formative years, this was a remarkable record. But Dennis Ryan was a remarkable man. Had he not succumbed when he was past middle age to the Irish impulse to wander and to the lure of the West, his record in Maine would have been much more impressive. Even so, his name is linked with the important Catholic center which developed in the Sheepscott Valley during the second and third decades of the nineteenth century.
Dennis Ryan was a prisoner when he arrived in the port of Boston in the fall of 1814, one of the passengers on a Canadian bound British ship captured by an American privateer. This was an unintended but novel way of getting to the United States. He had spent one year at a seminary (Carlow College, Ireland) and had received the tonsure, a clear indication of his intention to be a priest. We are told that a strong desire to devote his life to the spiritual needs of his exiled countrymen drove him to this country, and if this was so one finds it difficult to discover the reasons for his choice of means to this end. Withdrawing from the seminary was not the logical step. But passage on a ship to Canada and capture by an American pri- vateer were the quickest way of getting to America in 1814
47
PIONEER PRIESTS AND PROJECTS
with war raging between the United States and England. This, however, was Irish luck and not planned. Since Bishop Chev- erus offers us the information that Ryan's talents were "not brilliant," one is inclined to conjecture that his withdrawal from the seminary was dictated from above. But Dennis Ryan want- ed to be a priest, and Cheverus, hard pressed for priests with a talent for hard work under adverse circumstances, accepted him in the spring of 1815. He completed his studies in the Bishop's rectory under the watchful eyes and scholarly direc- tions of Father Matignon and Bishop Cheverus. He was or- dained a priest on Trinity Sunday, May 30, 1817, by Bishop Cheverus in the Franklin Street Cathedral, the first priest ordained in Boston, indeed the first in all New England. Chev- erus was deeply grateful for the turn of events that brought young Ryan to his rectory in the spring of 1815, for he was deeply discouraged at the time from the failure of other pros- pects for the priesthood, American-born youths with great promises, to persevere.
Cheverus kept the "mild mannered" Ryan with him in Boston for a year after his ordination as an assistant to the aging and sickly Father Matignon, in reality another year of training in pastoral theology. Before he was ordained, the bishop had de- cided on his work. He would be an Indian missionary, he informed Propaganda in a letter dated February 7, 1817, re- placing Father Romagné who had decided to return to France the next year. But the plans were changed during the year. He finally decided to send him to the Catholics of Newcastle and Damariscotta, at last fulfilling a desire and promise of long standing to assign a resident priest to St. Patrick's. So in the spring of 1818 the first priest ordained in Boston went to the first church built in Maine. Father Ryan found the change to his liking, and he discovered the bishop had a nice gift for him to speed him on the way. He gave him a hundred dollars, an ordination gift from one of the bishop's friends but wisely re- tained until he had real need for it. "Once on a mission this sum will be very useful to him," Cheverus told the friend. On
48
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN MAINE
May 1, 1818 he celebrated his thirty-second birthday with the Kavanaghs and was now in the position he had ambitioned years ago, - to serve the spiritual needs of his exiled country- men. His task was to carry on the pioneer work of Bishop Cheverus in this area. Dennis Ryan adjusted himself quickly and affably to this Catholic colony; he is "doing very well, being loved and respected by all," Bishop Cheverus wrote to a friend in the fall of 1818.
Damariscotta was not long his residence. The older Catholic settlers of this town and Newcastle, the Kavanaghs, Cottrills, Hanleys, and Madigans, had preempted the better lands (Kav- anagh and Cottrill had acquired 567 acres by one purchase in 1795), and so the more recent Irish immigrants gravitated towards Whitefield and Windsor on the Sheepscott River where good land was cheap. Ryan decided to move to Whitefield, about ten miles away, in order to be in the midst of this grow- ing community, a decision that must have pained the Catholics of St. Patrick's who had waited so long and so patiently for a resident priest. The decision is not easy to understand, but it surely had the approval of Bishop Cheverus. It was one of the unfortunate aspects of this Catholic colony on the banks of the Damariscotta that its size, after the first sudden growth, remained stationary because, it would seem, the large land holdings of the pioneers dissuaded other immigrants from settling there.
Once established in Whitefield, in the home of a parishioner, Father Ryan was soon at work on a church and a rectory. The latter was delayed until the site of the former was settled. The choice was between North Whitefield and Windsor, for the majority of the Catholics were located in or between these two towns. An opportunity to acquire a satisfactory lot in North Whitefield decided the issue. The pastor was mechanical minded and deft with his hands and was not averse to using them and teaching others how to hew, frame a building and make bricks. The church was started in 1819 and the rectory about the same time, and it would seem that he devoted more
49
PIONEER PRIESTS AND PROJECTS
loving care to the latter, for Bishop Fenwick has described the church as a "miserably built" wooden building. The rectory was a large, two story brick house with a fireplace in nearly every room. The church was blessed on June 30, 1822 by Bishop Cheverus, the last visit of this great man who did so much to establish the Catholic faith in Maine. When he went to say his last good-byes to his dear friends of St. Patrick's the sorry contrast between the new church in Whitefield and the neat brick church at Damariscotta Mills must have added more grief to his heavy heart. However, he had found everything in good order in North Whitefield and was pleased with the good work done by Father Ryan and the devotion of the people to their new pastor. Evidently it was the priest and not the bishop who selected the name for the church, the second church built in Maine; it was called St. Dennis, with a double "n" as he spelt it. Later, after he had departed, they dropt one of them. In retrospect the Catholics of St. Dennis' were grateful that their first church was a cheap frame build- ing, for so rapidly did the Catholic population of the district grow during the 1820's the church was far too small by 1832 and another had to be constructed.
The increase of Catholics in this area was quite spectacular. Maine was a popular state during the 1820's, surpassing all other New England states in population increase. The Irish contributed to this record, and the sudden growth of Irish Catholics in the vicinity of Whitefield is evidence of the con- tribution. There were no more than five Catholics in the town in 1812. Four years later when Bishop Cheverus visited there, he offered Mass in an overcrowded cabin, gave Holy Commun- ion to eighteen, publicly received the renewal of faith from two lapsed Catholics, preached in the afternoon to a large crowd in an unfinished barn, and ended the day by baptizing five babies. In 1832, when Bishop Fenwick made his second visit, St. Dennis' had a congregation of over twelve hundred souls. The bishop was pleasantly surprised to discover that here in the Sheepscott valley was one of his biggest parishes and that the
50
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN MAINE
Catholics were farmers with prosperous looking farms, well cultivated orchards, comfortable homes, and with a fine tradi- tion of hospitality.
Father Ryan obviously attracted the Irish to Whitefield and Windsor. Until 1826, when Father Ffrench was assigned to Eastport, he was the only Irish priest in Maine, and the migrant Irishman would hear about him and the Irish colony as soon as he reached the Maine border. He would know, too, that he would be welcomed there, for Father Ryan had initiated a policy that was designed to attract them. Ryan found some sort of work for the newcomer around the rectory or farm until he was in the position to establish himself in the locality. Bishop Fenwick also advised the Irish he met on his travels in Maine to move to Whitefield; he tells us about one group discovered in a crowded room near the wharves in Bristol during his jour- ney of 1827, and how he purchased food for them immediately and told them they would be better off if they moved to White- field. This, we may be sure, was not an isolated case. As we shall see, the full import of the Whitefield colony was not im- pressed on Bishop Fenwick until he visited in 1832. Then it was, when he spent three or four days during July visiting their farms and homes and on Sunday, July 15, confirming seventy- five from Whitefield and the neighboring towns, that he real- ized he had the best solution to the problem of the Irish immigrant: a farming colony with a resident priest.
Only St. Dennis' itself grieved the Bishop. The shabby wooden building, the contrast now underscored by the fine rectory surrounded with well ordered barns and orchards, dis- turbed him and he urged pastor and parishioners to construct a more worthy church. They responded with alacrity, for they were now in the position to do so. They were aided, too, ac- cording to a family tradition by the Smithwick money; in 1824 Father Ryan had become legal guardian of Francis and James Smithwick, sons of the wealthy widow, Mrs. James Smithwick, whose marriage in 1800 in the Kavanagh mansion had nearly introduced Father Cheverus to the tortures of a Puritan pillory.
51
PIONEER PRIESTS AND PROJECTS
The new church was built on the same site and within two years they had a brick church that compared favorably with St. Patrick's. In the spring of 1834, a traveller passing through Whitefield observed the new construction and has told us that:
The Catholics of Whitefield, in the state of Maine, have already their new church roofed in, which will be completed without delay. They have indeed done themselves much credit in the size and solidity of the building which they have undertaken, and which we are informed is one of the largest in the state. It was blessed August 10, 1838.
Ryan, of course, did not confine himself to North Whitefield. His missions, as the Catholic Directory for 1838 informs us, embraced a considerable tract of the neighboring country. At the beginning of his pastorate this could be described as the towns between the Kennebec and the Penobscot, with Bangor as the north-eastern extreme. He made occasional visits to Portland, a natural stop on his way to and from Boston, before Father Ffrench resided there (1827). But his regular missions were Augusta, Gardiner, Bath, Wiscasset, Waldoboro, Thomas- ton, Bucksport, and Damariscotta. With an increasing congre- gation at Whitefield and the only priest in this area ( the nearest prior to 1828 would be the missionary at Oldtown Indian Island when one was there) the visits to these towns were rare. Even St. Patrick's, ten miles away, was visited only "occasionally."
The occasional visits to St. Patrick's is a clear indication of the shift of the center of Catholics from the Damariscotta to the Sheepscott, but Damariscotta Mills still remained one of the scheduled stopping places of the bishop on his visitations to Maine, for the Kavanagh home was still there and in this home not only hospitality but strong support and needed assistance awaited him. Bishop Fenwick made his first visit to the Kavanagh home in the summer of 1827. He had started this trip, his first visitation of this part of his diocese, with calls on the Indians, first to Pleasant Point and then to Indian Island, and thence he journeyed to Damariscotta Mills "arriving at the respectable and amicable Mr. Kavanagh's home" at seven o'clock in the morning. This was probably their first meeting,
52
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN MAINE
although both had heard much of each other; it was their only meeting, too, for James Kavanagh died the next summer, June 3, 1828, at the age of seventy-two. America had been good to him, and he in turn had been good to that part of America he loved best, the banks of the Damariscotta, and to the Catholics living on the river's banks. And his eldest son was now in the position to carry on the good tradition.
The day of their first meeting Edward Kavanagh had taken the bishop to see St. Patrick's. No doubt Fenwick was re- minded of the St. Patrick's he and Father Anthony Kohlmann had built in New York and which Bishop Cheverus had con- secrated on Ascension Thursday, 1815. Fenwick regretted that "there were so few Catholics" now attending St. Patrick's that Father Ryan "could attend only one Sunday a month." Ten years ago it was the reverse; Father Ryan was a resident priest at St. Patrick's and North Whitefield was the mission. That evening the bishop went to North Whitefield to spend five days with Father Ryan and the Catholics of St. Dennis'. On August 7 he returned to the Kavanagh home. He had some business to talk over with Edward Kavanagh. He dined with Edward and Edwin Smith, "a very intelligent man and a friend of young Mr. Kavanagh, as well as of the Catholics at large, though a Protestant." The two young men talked to Bishop Fenwick about their prospects in the coming election. Both were seek- ing seats in the state senate. Kavanagh was now in politics; in 1825 he had been elected to the lower house, the first Catholic elected to a New England state legislature, and in the fall of 1826 had sought a senate seat but had been defeated. Now he was trying again, and Fenwick told him at dinner that evening that, if they were elected, he planned to persuade the legislature to pass some bills favorable to the Indians. Later the bishop received the good news that Kavanagh had been elected, again the first Catholic to be elected to the upper house of a New England legislature. From this visit until his untimely death in 1844, Edward Kavanagh was a friend and adviser of Bishop Fenwick. That evening, before departing for Portland,
53
PIONEER PRIESTS AND PROJECTS
the bishop called on Matthew Cottrill, the other founder of St. Patrick's. This was also the last meeting with Cottrill, for he died the next year, on April 20, a few weeks before his friend, James Kavanagh.
When the bishop next visited St. Patrick's, in the summer of 1832, the number of Catholic families had declined to four or five. There were many more than that, the bishop noted, in Bristol. What had happened to the large numbers, many of them converts, mentioned by Cheverus? Had they moved away or had they returned to their former churches from lack of constant care? Some had moved, no doubt, and some had returned to their former faith, but the numbers attending St. Patrick's in Bishop Cheverus' days should not be credited en- tirely to Newcastle and Damariscotta. They came from the nearby towns and many of them would now be attending St. Dennis'. A mass at St. Patrick's by a bishop could still attract a large crowd, as Bishop Fenwick discovered. He offered Mass there on July 1 and there was a grand attendance, some coming twenty miles to see the bishop. It was like that when Cheverus visited.
Like those before him Bishop Fenwick evidently became very fond of St. Patrick's and the few Catholic families there, and he promised on this occasion to send them a resident priest. It could well be that they thought they should see Father Ryan more often. In any case it was a promise dictated by a heart full of appreciation for what these pioneer Catholics had done and were still doing for the good of the Church in Maine, for it would be difficult to justify two resident priests within ten miles of each other with so many Catholics throughout New England in urgent need of priestly care. When the bishop prepared the statistics for the 1833 Directory he was mindful of the promise and added "vacant" beside St. Patrick's. He was never in the position to meet his promise, however. The 1834 edition notes that the church was attended "occasionally" by Father Ryan, and subsequent editions carry the same nota- tion. Not until 1931, one year short of a century after Bishop
54
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN MAINE
Fenwick's promise, did St. Patrick's have its first resident priest. Yet the small, stationary Catholic population in these two towns has had one happy recompense. There was never any need to build a larger church, and since Kavanagh and Cottrill built well, the neat brick church has survived a century and a half as the parish church and is now the oldest Catholic church in New England.
The growth was slow and painful even in the larger towns of this district. There is no doubt that during the 1820's and 1830's many Catholics settled in the towns on and between the Kennebec and the Penobscot. The tendency was to settle or to move to these larger towns where the construction of canals, dams, pioneer industries and, later, railroads offered the Irish opportunities for work. But even here, where the concentra- tion of Catholics was relatively heavy, the construction of a church or even the acquisition of a building for worship was snail-like. If it was not the paucity of Catholics that delayed them, it would be their poverty, or the lack of a priest or the lack of interest by a priest. The contrast in the drive and de- termination between the Catholics of the farming colony of Whitefield and the Catholics in the industrial and shipping towns is sharp.
Not until the middle of the 1830's were two new churches added to this area: Augusta in 1836 and Bangor in 1838. These churches eased somewhat the burdens of the pastor of St. Dennis'. The Bangor church, St. Michael's, was not the work of Ryan. The Catholic colony in Bangor had mushroomed in the early 1830's; there was scarcely a score there in 1830 and nearly a thousand, according to Bishop Fenwick, in 1836. Bangor on the beautiful Penobscot was, if we accept the author- ity of a gazetteer, a health resort at this time, noted for the purity of its air and water, - indispensable requisites of good health and longevity. It was, however, neither the invigorat- ing air nor the exhilarating water which attracted the Irish to the town. Bangor, by the end of the 1830's had become the largest lumber depot in America, and the lumber trade offered
55
PIONEER PRIESTS AND PROJECTS
the Irish a living. They would attend Mass at Indian Island when a missionary was in residence, and it was Father James Conway, the Penobscots' pastor from 1831 to 1835, who pur- chased a lot for a church in 1833. The next year Bishop Fen- wick assigned Father Patrick McNamee to push the construc- tion of a church. But he made little progress and was replaced in April, 1836, by Father Michael Lynch. Under his direction St. Michael's was completed in 1838 and dedicated November 10, 1839; it was also too small for the burgeoning Irish com- munity.
Progress in Augusta, where Father Ryan was the founder of the church, was slower. Selected as the site of the state capital in 1831, the construction of buildings for the state government and the building of the Kennebec dam that cost $300,000 had made Augusta a boom town. Most of the manual labor for these constructions was supplied by Irish immigrants. In May 1836 Bishop Fenwick gave Father Ryan approval for the pur- chase.($2000) of a substantial Unitarian church abandoned for a better site, and he sacrificed his cathedral preacher, Father John J. Curtin, so that the Catholics of Augusta might have a resident priest. But the priest did not appreciate the sacrifice, found the change and Augusta far from his liking, and after three months elected to leave the diocese rather than remain in Augusta. Father Patrick Flood, young and able, succeeded him and remained there until the 1837 depression hit the poor Catholics so hard they were unable to support a priest. Flood was removed to Portland, where a replacement for Father Ffrench was needed, and Augusta reverted to the status of a mission of Whitefield. Not until 1845 did a resident priest re- turn, but the new pastor, Father Richard A. Wilson, was transferred (May, 1846) before he was ready to start the church on the lot purchased on State Street; he did not remain long enough to be listed in the annual directory as pastor in Augusta. So Augusta again became a mission of St. Dennis'. Construc- tion on the church, however, continued and St. Mary's was opened for services in July, 1847. Augustans claim James
56
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN MAINE
O'Reilly as their next resident pastor and he may have resided there at times, but his official residence was North Whitefield, with Damariscotta, Augusta, Gardiner, Bath, Thomaston, and Belfast as missions. They had to wait until 1856 for the return of a resident pastor, and with the arrival of Father Charles Egan, who remained in Augusta thirteen years, St. Mary's start- ed the second phase of a long parish history.
Gardiner, about five miles below Augusta on the Kennebec and seven or eight miles west of North Whitefield, was another regular stop for Bishop Cheverus and Bishop Fenwick and was, like Augusta, a mission of St. Dennis'. As so frequently hap- pened the development of the church here was greatly aided by a prominent Catholic family that gave the other Catholics a place for worship and a center of information and social gath- ering until they were able to hire a hall or build a church. In Gardiner it was the Esmond family.
Martin Esmond, a native of County Wexford like Kavanagh and Cottrill, settled in this town about 1810. He married Jean Stuart, and in their home Bishop Cheverus offered mass when he visited Gardiner. They had two sons, John, born in 1818, and Bernard, born in 1820 and baptized by Father Ryan on All Saints' Day. The Esmonds were one of the few Catholic fam- ilies financially able to send their sons away for an education; both went to Montreal College, Bernard making the fall trip with a young lad from Boston, John Williams, who would later be the Archbishop of Boston. It was the older of the two, however, who was Bishop Fenwick's favorite, for John Esmond was attracted to the priesthood and when he started his studies at the seminary at Montreal the bishop was happy with the thought that the Catholics of Maine were at last providing him with vocations. The news, then, that the young seminarian had suddenly died in December of 1833 was a hard blow. It was an added shock to the young man's mother, for Martin Esmond had died January 19, 1832. The widow courageously kept on at Gardiner, operating a store on Water Street and continuing as a leader of the growing Catholics there.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.