USA > Maine > The Catholic church in Maine > Part 9
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It is here, on a tract of 500 acres, specially reserved for the purpose the Bishop has concluded to erect a College for the education of Catholic youths, with an Ecclesiastical Seminary. The buildings are now being constructed for the above purpose, on a convenient scale; - and hopes are entertained they will be in readiness for the admission of Students, before the close of this present year.
The problem of a faculty still remained. Where would he get the professors? Surely he must have given this considerable thought. Since he had difficulty getting a resident priest for the colony, a religious order or congregation was his only hope- ful source. The Jesuits were his first choice. He had jokingly said on his arrival that the tasty New England cod would entice them back in clusters. He wanted to see them back in their old Maine missions. When he was appointed Bishop of Boston he had asked for the loan of Virgil Barber for work among the Indians; he had reminded them of Rasle's great work in Maine by dedicating a monument to him. Now he would present them with a building, a good farm, and the income from the mills. That was more likely to attract them than cod fish.
First he turned to a group of French Jesuits who had recently arrived in Montreal in 1842 only to discover their plans had gone awry and had declared their intentions of finding work in the United States. Bishop Fenwick offered them the college at Benedicta and as many missions in Maine as they could
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handle. This offer had the immediate effect of clearing up their difficulties in Montreal where they decided to remain. He then turned to his friends, the American Jesuits, keeping his brother, George Fenwick, a Jesuit, posted on his doings. He offered them the college, the farm, the mills, all the unsold land, and all the missions in Maine. Even if a group of American Jesuits could be spared, a college in Benedicta had little promise of success unless it was the center of a thriving Catholic region, as envisioned by the bishop. It was, of course, far from that in 1842.
Then the decisive factor in the future of Benedicta as the Catholic intellectual and social center of New England ap- peared. In the fall of 1842 Father James Fitton offered the bishop the academy he had started and was still conducting under increasing difficulties in Worcester. Bishop Fenwick accepted the mortgaged gift. For awhile he considered con- verting Mount St. James Academy into a college and seminary staffed by diocesan priests, a substitute for his Boston plan, and inviting the Jesuits to Benedicta where they, too, would con- duct a college and make it their headquarters for the Maine missions. The chances of staffing a college or a seminary, not to mention both institutions, by diocesan priests at this time were remote, and it is doubtful if Bishop Fenwick was here expressing more than a desire. The Superior of the American Jesuits was compelled to decline the offer of the Benedicta proposal. The bishop then offered both places to the Jesuits. Fortunately he would not accept a refusal, and the Jesuits accepted the bishop's plans for a boarding college at Mount St. James. With this acceptance Bishop Fenwick had won his long struggle for a college.
The college, named Holy Cross after his cathedral, did in time nurture the vocations of many diocesan priests and among these priests not a few were called to be bishops. Ten years before the college was founded, the American hierarchy had in their pastoral letter to the faithful expressed the desire "to see your children prepared to take our places." Bishop Fen-
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PIONEER PRIESTS AND PROJECTS
wick had signed that letter. His college on Mount St. James was no small factor in fulfilling that desire. When the college was opened there was only one diocese in all New England and Fenwick was the only bishop. In 1893, when the college celebrated its golden jubilee, there were seven dioceses in New England. The bishops of five of these dioceses were alumni of the bishop's college; in another diocese the coadjutor bishop with the right of succession was an alumnus.1 Only in Boston, where Archbishop John Williams presided, was there no alum- nus bishop. John Williams had received his college education before Benedict Fenwick founded Holy Cross.
Fenwick never did establish a seminary; neither did John Fitzpatrick, his successor. Were all his efforts wasted? By no means. He was educating the Catholics of his diocese to the urgency of having an educated clergy and to their responsibility to provide both the seminarians and the facilities of education. He was not alone in ambitioning a diocesan seminary; it was the dream of many American bishops. But a diocesan seminary was more than the American Catholics of these decades could support. This is amply proven by the discouraging efforts of the New York diocese, larger and wealthier than Boston, to establish a satisfactory seminary. Bishop John Dubois started his appeals to the Lyons association for financial aid about the same time as Bishop Fenwick. Neither he nor John Hughes, his successor, succeeded in establishing a satisfactory diocesan seminary; it was always a faculty that proved to be the snag. The solution was a provincial seminary, as Hughes eventually realized and Fitzpatrick agreed. Yet even this was no easy task. Archbishop Hughes did not live to dedicate St. Joseph's Seminary in Troy, the provincial seminary for New York and New England, on December 1, 1864. St. Joseph's was a solid achievement, but its foundations were laid by the efforts of
1 The bishops in the order of their appointment were: James A. Healy, appointed in 1875 Bishop of Portland (est. 1853); Lawrence S. McMahon, appointed in 1879 Bishop of Hart- ford (est. 1843); Denis N. Bradley, appointed in 1884 Bishop of Manchester (est. 1884); Matthew Harkins, appointed in 1887 Bishop of Providence (est. 1872); John S. Michaud, appointed in 1892 Coadjutor Bishop of Burlington (est. 1853); Thomas D. Beaven, appoint- ed in 1892 Bishop of Springfield (est. 1870).
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Bishop Fenwick and his colleagues to educate American youths in American seminaries.
The decision in favor of Worcester as the site of a college put an end to the dreams of Benedicta as the center of Catholic life in New England. But Benedicta was far from a failure. Without distractions the settlers concentrated on what it was first planned to be: a farming colony for the immigrants to New England. These were mainly Irish, although others were free to go there and a few of the many German Catholic immigrants to these states during these decades settled here. After a few rough years the colony was firmly established and continued to advance despite the decline of active interest on the part of Bishop Fenwick. From 1843 until his death the college in Wor- cester was his cardinal concern.
It is regrettable that we lack details about the early years of the settlement. There is only scant information about the pioneer settlers and confusion even about the length of resi- dence of the first pastors. The names of some of the first set- tlers are known. Nicholas Broderick, Timothy Dorsey, Martin Qualey, Philip Finnegan and John Nullmore came in 1834; Patrick Brade, Chris Keegan, John Byrne, Francis Smith, John Perry, Henry Rivers and Martin Lawlor followed shortly after- wards. But we miss the day by day account of these pioneers which would give us a detailed picture of the life on the Molunkus River. The annual Directory, although far from ac- curate and usually containing the statistics for the year prior to publication, is our best source on the priests. There we are given the names of the priests who served the community from year to year. Until the summer of 1838 Benedicta depended on visits from Father Michael Lynch in Bangor, seventy miles away, although these visits were supplemented by the bishop's stay there in the summer of 1837. Father Tyler was there for the "whole season" (probably from early summer to fall) of 1838. No priest is listed in the Directory for 1839, but there- after the colony was served by four active and zealous priests: James Conway (1840), the Indian missionary who had dis-
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covered the township, William Tyler (1841-1843), who was appointed the first Bishop of Hartford shortly after his recall to Boston, Manasses Dougherty (1844), a young Irishman re- cently ordained and with a fine Old Testament baptismal name that would be readily recognized by New England, and William Moran (1845-1850). After Father Moran, Benedicta became one of the missions under the care of the Jesuits.
The years assigned to these priests, as found in the Directory are not entirely accurate. We know from a few surviving letters of Father Dougherty that he was there in December, 1842. Writing to a Mrs. Mullen of Houlton (on information he had received from Father McMahon, late of Eastport, and not from Father Tyler) five days before Christmas, 1842, he told her that he had recently been "appointed by Bishop Fenwick to the Pastoral care of the Roman Catholics of these places, namely Conway and Houlton." Conway was not an error; Dougherty's letters were posted from "Conway, Aroostook Road." And so we must conclude that the colony was at first called after its first resident priest and only later after its founder. Dougherty found enough Catholics in Houlton to warrant a chapel and he repeatedly urged them to start con- struction, but they did not respond to his proddings.
Early in September, 1843 Dougherty visited Boston and on his return he had a letter of introduction to Edward Kavanagh, now governor of the state, from Bishop Fenwick. The bishop wanted the young priest to become acquainted with Kavanagh and entrusted the missionary with a gift of grapes, probably grown in the colony, for the governor. It is from another letter of the bishop to Father Dougherty that we learn of his intent to establish a model Catholic community in the Aroostook Val- ley. Temperance was to be stressed, particular attention was to be given to the catechising of the young, frequent reception of the sacraments urged on all, but especially on the young. A happy and harmonious community was the bishop's fond hope, and he suggested the arbitration of all disputes as the best means. This spirit did, indeed, become a tradition in Ben-
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edicta and the community became known as the Catholic utopia. Benedicta made a good impression on Thomas Colley Grattan and he has passed on his observations to us in his Civilized America; as British consul in Boston from 1839 to 1846 he was in a good position to observe the experiment. It was, he thought, "the most successful effort to ameliorate the conditions of the Irish in America," and would become a model for similar projects because of "its complete success and the high state of moral discipline adopted by the people.'
The church, St. Benedict's, was built in 1838. It was the sixth church, excepting the Indian chapels, built in Maine and the fourth under the direction of Bishop Fenwick. Although he described it as a "splendid" structure in his offer to the Jesuits, his own description of the first St. Dennis' of North Whitefield (a miserable building) would be more accurate. It was con- structed of "hewed logs laid up in cobble style," and was soon too small for the growing colony. The second church was an improvement, and the third church in Benedicta, "of imposing Gothic design," was a clear testimony of the continuing growth and faith of the residents of the town and a worthy monument in memory of the pioneer settlers. The old key to the first St. Benedict's, a heavy six inch instrument with a square inch bit, first used according to tradition by Bishop Fenwick, was pre- sented to Holy Cross College as a reminder of where the college might have been.1
Potatoes became the staple crop of the colony. At first some turned to timber for a living, but better lands elsewhere in Maine made it an unprofitable livelihood. Dairying was tried, too. But the potato became king. By 1842 three ships laden with Maine potatoes arrived at the wharves of Georgetown in the District of Columbia where they were noticed by a friend of Edward Kavanagh. The friend was reminded that he owed Kavanagh a letter. He told Kavanagh, who had spent the sum- mer there as a member of the Maine commission that worked
1 It will be found in the Museum of Dinand Library, in one of the exhibit cases resting beside the Catholic Directory of 1840 which is opened to the page where Fenwick first announced his decision to found a college and seminary at Benedicta.
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with Webster in negotiating the Webster-Ashburton treaty, that he had purchased ten bushels for his own table and hoped "to find them as good as yourself." The friend also gave him the current prices on Maine potatoes; they sold for twenty-five to thirty cents a bushel on the boat and seventy to eighty cents in the retail market. This was not a price that would make the Benedicta farmers tycoons, but the middleman was already making a tidy profit.
The hope that Catholics would spread out from Benedicta was partially realized. This, of course, weakened the colony, but it was a healthy and desirable expansion. St. Benedict's first mission, Houlton, soon became the more important center of the potato industry. In 1844-1845 Father Moran built a church there and in time the history of St. Patrick's in Damaris- cotta Mills was repeated; Benedicta became a mission of Houlton as Damariscotta became a mission of North White- field. Before the decade was over, in 1849, Father Moran had opened another mission. This one was in Fort Fairfield. There could be no better evidence of the success of the colony than the opening of these two missions during the 1840's.
Benedicta, too, remained healthy. Early in 1859 (January 29) a correspondent penned a letter to the editor of the Pilot. He informed the readers of this weekly that Bishop Fenwick's colony was
in a most flourishing and happy condition. No class of people bear a more worthy reputation among all classes and none better deserve it. For general intelligence, industry, and morality no community surpasses them.
There was talk that the "Shakers or Quakers" were planning to settle there. The writer would like to see the Trappists quar- tered in this area: "I see no better field for them, for the good to themselves and their fellowmen." And better days were ahead for the Aroostook Valley. Bangor no longer was the general market for her products. The St. Andrew's railroad had brought the area into direct contact with New York and Boston, and had also reduced freight costs noticeably. The proposed Aroostook road would introduce more and still better improve-
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ments. The Aroostook Valley, in brief, was a good place for immigrants who wanted to be independent farmers within six years. The letter reads as if from the pen of Bishop Fenwick. It was not. The founder of Benedicta "remarkable for the kind- ness of his heart, and the cheerfulness of his disposition," had died thirteen years before, on Tuesday, August 11, 1846. He was buried at his request in the graveyard at Holy Cross College. He would have been buried in Benedicta if his college had been there.
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THE JESUITS IN MAINE: SECOND PHASE
O N Friday, June 9, 1848 Bishop John Fitzpatrick visited Holy Cross College where he had arranged to see Father Ignatius Brocard, S.J., Superior of the Maryland Province of Jesuits. The bishop returned to Boston that day, mission ac- complished. He had persuaded Father Brocard to assign two Jesuits to work among the scattered Catholics, Indians, Can- adians, and Irish, of northern Maine. It was nearly a century since Father Étienne Lauverjat had retired from the Penobscot to the St. John. Bishop Fenwick had tried his best to restore the Jesuit missions in Maine, but without success. Early in his episcopacy he had had Father Virgil Barber, S.J., on loan for a few brief years as an Indian missionary, and near the end of his life Father John Power, S.J., had spent a few months as pastor in Portland. That was the best he could do. Fenwick was a sick man, with only a few months to live, when Power, one of the original faculty of Holy Cross College, had visited him on his way to Frederick, Maryland. Power had been im- pressed "by the kindness of the good congregation of Portland," and, aware of the need for priests in Maine, may have urged the case with the Jesuit Provincial. Now Fenwick's successor, acting on the information that some exiled Swiss Jesuits would soon be in this country, tried again. This time the bishop's request was respected.
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1. THE JESUITS RETURN TO MAINE
James Moore, S.J., and John Bapst, S.J., were the first two Jesuits assigned to Maine, Moore to Oldtown as director of the band, and Bapst to Indian Island, the Penobscot reservation, opposite Oldtown. Father Bapst was the first to arrive, on Monday, August 7, 1848. He was also the last one to leave when the missions were closed in 1859. The life of the re- established Jesuit missions of Maine was not long, only eleven years, but they were important ones in the history of the diocese, for the work was started when hundreds of Catholics, scattered throughout a wide area, were in danger of losing their faith from the lack of priestly care and parish life and from the pressure of the Protestant crusade. A number of Jesuits, some of them from Holy Cross, of whom the most prominent was Father Anthony Ciampi, former President of the College, served on the Maine mission. But only one spent the entire eleven years there: John Bapst. On the score of his eleven years of labor he would have rated a prominent part in the history of the missions and the diocese of Portland. Yet his work and the work of his companions have been over- shadowed by an unfortunate episode wherein Bapst was tarred and feathered by a mob under the spell of Know-Nothingism. The episode was a passing event; the faith restored, the Chris- tian homes established, the churches built became enduring memorials of the Jesuit missions in Maine.
John Bapst was the first to arrive, and, despite "a brilliant reception," Indian fashion, he was a lonely man as he crossed the Penobscot and set foot on Indian Island Monday, August 7, 1848. As he began his "sojourn on this solitary island in the midst of strangers," the mysterious ways of Divine Providence must have tested his faith. He was thirty-five years old, had been ordained a priest less than two years, was unable to con- verse in English, had no desire for missionary work, had not even in his dreams seen an American Indian, had arrived a few weeks previously in New York with a band of forty-four Swiss Jesuits exiled from their homeland by a civil war. Not until the
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May of that year had he given any serious thought to America, and that thought had been forced on him when he was told one day to start for Antwerp and to await a ship for the United States, and within three hours he was on his way to that bustling city. The trip across the Atlantic had been a night- mare; the expected four weeks ran into seven, and food and water were rationed long before he landed. Only the company on board ship, a remarkable group of men, some ordained priests like himself and other seminarians, had sustained him. Among the forty-four was a future General of the Society of Jesus (Anthony M. Anderledy), a future Provincial of the Maryland Province (Burchard Villiger ), a future bishop of the Indian Territory (John B. Miége), a future great Indian mis- sionary among the Pottowattomy tribe (Maurice Gaillard). There were others, too, who made sterling contributions to the struggling Catholic Church in the United States. Bapst was one of them. God has a way of converting catastrophes into blessings; surely the civil war that drove these Swiss Jesuits into exile was a blessing to the American Catholics. Many Catholics in Maine shared in those blessings. But Bapst had reason, as he tried to sleep on the night of August 7, 1848, to question the wisdom of assigning him to the Penobscot Indians. He readily admitted two years later that he was disappointed with the assignment. Recalling his arrival in New York, he confided to a friend: "He [Father Brocard] offered me the mission among the Indians of Old Town; I accepted it, not without some disappointment."
He had had a few weeks in New York to recuperate from the rough trip and then had boarded the Boston boat in com- pany with Father Gustave Eck, S.J., arriving in that city “in an incredibly short time." He stayed in Boston a few days, saw the bishop about his work in Maine and how to get there, and then boarded another steamer, after parting with Eck, his "last friend," who remained in Boston as pastor of Holy Trinity.1
1 Eck was the first Jesuit pastor of Holy Trinity and Jesuits have continued to be in charge of the parish. This German parish introduced the customs of Christmas trees and Christmas cards to Boston and New England.
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There was good boat service between Boston and Portland; the "commodious and fast steamer John Marshall" would take him to the Custom House Wharf for one dollar. From Portland the State of Maine would take him to Bangor for another two dollars. Bangor was the principal lumber depot of North America, and its population of twelve thousand was increasing rapidly from the influx of Irish immigrants. Thoreau, only two years before, had described the city as "a star on the edge of the night." Bapst could see only the dark of the night. The Oldtown Indian reservation, on an island in the Penobscot opposite Oldtown, was ten miles above Bangor, and the Bangor and Piscataquis railroad, in operation since 1836, would bring him to his destination. There remained only a boat ride to the island where the Indians, about five hundred of them, awaited him. Bernard de Voto has described for us the feelings of a visitor to New England; one has, he says, a feeling of personal recognition, of seeming to have been there before, of having come home. This is a fine description of what Bapst did not feel. He felt like the stranger he was, alone on a solitary island among strangers, heavy of heart, without the companionship of a community life. In the colleague with him on the Maine missions and by the nature of the work that demanded lengthy separations, Bapst found little of the fellowship he wanted and needed.
There was a remarkable contrast between the two men selected to restore the Jesuit missions in Maine. James Moore was born in Ireland and had been a Sulpician before entering the Society of Jesus in 1839 at the age of forty. He was nearly fifty when sent to Maine. He liked to be on the move, working in a new place frequently, if not annually. He had been a parish priest at St. Thomas' in Maryland and at Trinity in Georgetown before his appointment in 1845 to Holy Cross as professor of French and administrator of the new college. He remained there for two years and then returned to Maryland. He was there when informed that he was Superior of the new mission in Maine and that Oldtown would be his headquarters.
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It is difficult to keep up with Moore's moves during the eleven years of the Maine missions, for he alternated between Maine, Holy Cross, and Maryland with the routine broken by a trip to Ireland to collect money to rebuild Holy Cross after the fire of 1852. His first stay in Maine lasted about two years, and he returned in 1853 and again in 1855. In all he spent considerable time in Maine, and his name is connected with many of the parishes that had their origins in this period. He was a kind- hearted, generous worker, but it must be admitted that he had a strong strain of restlessness in his system. Father Bapst does not mention him too often in his letters, but he did note on one occasion that Father Moore "wants to be alone;" alone and on the move would be more accurate.
One can get an idea of Father Moore's love for travel from the diary of an enterprising senior at Holy Cross College who kept a sharp eye on visitors to the campus. Under the date of January 17, 1849, he noted that "Father Moore, once our pro- curator, has just arrived here this evening;" he left the next day after dinner and a visit to the President of the College that resulted in a holiday for the students. The work in Maine was evidently agreeable, for "he looks as well as ever he did but more fleshy and his hair is perfectly gray." Father Moore was back on May 3, "with a stranger." "The old man," the observ- ing senior confided to his journal, "looks well and hearty." In the middle of July, Moore had a visitor himself; the Provincial was in New England making his annual visitation and "has been clear to Maine to see Fr. Moore." Late in the next month Moore was at Holy Cross again, bringing with him two students who had been studying in Montreal. "Fr. Moore looks well," we are told. The young man whose diary has posted us on the missionary's visits would see more of Maine than Father Moore. He was James A. Healy, Portland's second bishop, and as a bishop he would discover that a priest working in Maine in the nineteenth century was poorly qualified unless he loved to travel. No doubt that was one of the reasons for selecting James Moore.
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