USA > New York > Erie County > Buffalo > A history of Buffalo : delineating the evolution of the city > Part 6
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The beautiful new building of the First Unitarian Church, on Elmwood Avenue, at the corner of Ferry Street, designed by Edward A. and W. W. Kent, was finished in 1907, at a cost of not quite $140,000.
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PROTESTANT CHURCHES: IN THE NEW CENTURY
The beautiful old building of the Central Presbyterian Church, on Pearl and Genesee streets, was injured seriously by fire in this year. It was restored for a few years of use, but in 1909 the building and ground were sold to Michael Shea, the vaudeville manager, the society united with that of the Park Presbyterian, and a fine building of stone erected at the corner of Main Street and Jewett Avenue.
Saint Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church,-the first Italian M. E. Church in the Genesee Conference, was dedicated on the 28th of February, 1909. It was built of brick and white stone, at a cost of $15,000. The church stands at the corner of Front Avenue and Wilkeson streets.
The Evangelical Reformed Emmanuel Church cele- brated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1908, the Rev. James Storrer having been its pastor from the beginning. Speaking of the change which half a century had brought, Mr. Storrer remarked that the region of the church, on Humboldt Parkway, when he began service in it, was often called Siberia, because of its remoteness and inaccessibility.
Salem German Evangelical Church remodelled and enlarged its building in 1907. At the present time new buildings are in contemplation by the Plymouth Congrega- tional, the Pilgrim Congregational, the Woodside M. E., and the Evangelical St. Stephen's churches, and by the Memorial Church of the Evangelical Association.
CHAPTER II DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
T HE Neutral Nation of Indians, which occupied both borders of the Niagara River when French explorers and missionaries obtained their first acquaintance with this region of America, were visited by the Franciscan Father Dallion, from the Huron Mission, in the fall of 1626. From that time the Neutrals and the neighboring Senecas, in Western New York, received occa- sional visitations from the Catholic missionaries who labored in fields at the north and east; but no permanent mission appears to have been established among the former before they suffered destruction as a tribe. After that occurrence, a large territory enveloping the site of the future city of Buffalo was uninhabited, practically, for not less than a hundred years ; and after the Senecas had been driven into it, from their previous main residence in the Genesee valley, by Sullivan's expedition, in 1779, there is nothing in Bishop Timon's account of "Missions in Western New York" to indicate the presence of a missionary in their village on Buffalo Creek.
Apparently, therefore, the first performance of religious rites by a Catholic clergyman, within what is now the city of Buffalo, occurred in 1821; that being the year in which Bishop Timon has placed "the first recorded visit of a priest" to the white settlement on Buffalo Creek. The clerical visitor then was the Rt. Rev. Henry Conwell, Bishop of Philadelphia, who passed through the village on a journey westward, and baptized a child during his brief stay. The few Catholics of the place were next visited, in the same year, we are told, by the Reverend Mr. Kelly, of
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EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS
Rochester, "who said mass in St. Paul's, the Episcopal church, only five Catholic families being in attendance. From this time occasional visits were made by clergymen stationed at Rochester."
In 1828 the Rev. Mr. Baden was in Buffalo for six weeks, "officiating sometimes in the court house, and at other times at the residence of Louis Le Couteulx, Esq." At the solici- tation of Father Baden, Mr. Le Couteulx, on the 5th of January, 1829, executed a deed of a piece of land, in trust for the Catholics of Buffalo, to Rt. Rev. John Dubois, Bishop of New York, and his successors, for a Catholic church and cemetery, and sent it to the Bishop as a New Year's gift. Bishop Dubois was then making a visitation of his large diocese, and arrived at Buffalo in the summer of 1829. "He found," says Bishop Timon, "seven or eight hundred Catholics, instead of the seventy or eighty he had been led to expect. By means of an interpreter he heard the confessions of some two hundred Swiss; preached in the court house ; administered the sacraments of baptism and matrimony; proceeded to the above mentioned ground and dedicated it to the object for which it was given. This ceremony was the first of the kind ever performed in Western New York. After the consecration, the Catholics called upon the Bishop and urged him to send them a priest, which he promised to do. Accordingly, in the fall of that year, the Rev. Mr. Mertz arrived in Buffalo.
"Father Nicholas Mertz, who had collected upwards of $3,000 in Europe with the intention of building a church elsewhere, erected, in 1831, with part of this money, on the consecrated lot, a small wooden church called 'The Lamb of God' [known afterwards as St. Louis Church], the name being suggested by the figure on a bronze tabernacle, which he brought with him from Europe and placed in the church. When Father Mertz first arrived in Buffalo he resided in a
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small log hut, on the west side of Pearl Street, between Court and Eagle streets, and held Divine service in an old frame house near by."
Bishop Dubois made a second visit to Buffalo in 1831, and found, it is said by Bishop Timon, considerable discord in the church, between its German and Irish members; and listened to a complaint on the part of the former, that "the pastor would not allow them to manage the money affairs of the church." The complaint was dismissed.
A few years later, the number of Catholics having in- creased beyond the capacity of the little church of "The Lamb of God," and the Irish people being "pained by the petty annoyances to which they were exposed" in that con- gregation, "resolved to withdraw from it and procure, if possible, a pastor of their own, from whom they might receive more frequent instruction in English." In 1837 the Rev. Charles Smith was sent from Albany as their pastor, and services were held for them at various places, until 1841, when the original St. Patrick's Church was built at the corner of Ellicott and Batavia streets. Ultimately, in 1855, this church was transferred to the Sisters of Charity and became St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum.
Meantime, fresh discontents had appeared in the St. Louis Church of the German congregation, some part of its mem- bership claiming a right to control the property and funds of the church. In 1838 these members obtained incorpora- tion, under a law of 1784, which put that control in lay hands. Father Mertz left the church and was succeeded by the Rev. Alexander Pax, who proceeded to erect a larger edifice for the congregation, which had far outgrown the small temple of "The Lamb of God." But soon after the completion of the new building the dispute over rights between laymen and clergy, in the holding and management of church property, was made acute by action on the part
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THE ST. LOUIS CHURCH TROUBLES
of Bishop Hughes, who succeeded Bishop Dubois, on the death of the latter, in 1842. Bishop Hughes called a diocesan synod, to frame statutes for a decisive regulation of this among other church matters. The resulting enactments required the title of all church property in the diocese to be vested in its bishop, and affirmed his control over the use of church funds. The only congregation to resist this declaration of the law of the church was that of St. Louis in Buffalo. In this case the title to church lands was not in question, since Mr. Le Couteulx had conveyed his gift of land to Bishop Dubois, for the church; but the controversy was wholly concerning the control of the use.
The Bishop now wrote to the recalcitrants: "Should you determine that your church shall not be governed by the general law of the diocese, then we shall claim the privilege of retiring from its walls in peace, and leave you also in peace, to govern it as you will." The pastor, Father Pax, failing to enforce the statutes, resigned and left the city. After a time the church asked for another pastor, and received this reply from Bishop Hughes: "You shall not govern your Bishop, but your Bishop shall govern you in all ecclesiastical matters. When you are willing to walk in the way of your holy faith, as your forefathers did, and be numbered among the Catholic flock of the diocese, precisely as all other trustees and congregations are, then I shall send you a priest, if I have one." At the same the Bishop sent two priests who established a new church. The trustees attempted an appeal to Rome, without success. A part of the St. Louis congregation, which withdrew from it and met for worship in the basement of St. Patrick's Church, became the nucleus of a new congregation, for which the Church of St. Mary, on Batavia Street (now Broadway), was built, temporarily in 1844, and rebuilt of stone in 1850, with a convent on Pine Street.
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In August, 1844, the St. Louis trustees became reconciled with the Bishop, announcing that having received an expla- nation of the prelate's pastoral, which they had not under- stood correctly before, they promised "that the administra- tion of temporal affairs of our church shall be conducted conformably to the same." This ended the controversy for a time.
In that interval of better feeling the diocese of Buffalo was formed, by papal command, on the 23d of April, 1847. It embraced all that part of the State of New York which lies west of the eastern limits of Cayuga, Tomkins and Tioga counties, and the Very Reverend John Timon, then Visitor of the Congregation of Missions, was the Bishop named. He had been in laborious mission service at the West since 1825. Bishop Timon arrived in Buffalo on the 22d of October, and was received with warmth; but differences with the trustees of the St. Louis Church began in the first year of his rule. Again and again his authority was disputed and his commands disregarded, until finally, when the Bishop wished to place the church in charge of the Jesuit Fathers, and the trustees refused to admit them, their breach with him was complete. On the 14th of June, 1851, he solemnly declared "St. Louis Church to be under an interdict, and that, consequently, no child of the Church can, without grievous sin, assist there at such rites and prayers whilst this sad state of things continue."
St. Louis Church remained under the interdict for nearly four years. Speaking on the subject in the State Senate, on the 30th of January, 1855, the Hon. James O. Putnam said : "There still floats over its tower the black flag, symbolical of the darkness which envelops the altar over which it waves, bearing the significant inscription, 'Where is our Shepherd?'" On appeals to Rome, Archbishop Bedini was sent to investigate the questions at issue, and his
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BISHOP TIMON AND ST. LOUIS CHURCH
decision was against the trustees. As they still refused sub- mission, they were formally excommunicated, on the 22d of June, 1854. At the next meeting of the State Legislature, they petitioned for a general law, to place all church property under the control of trustees ; and such an act, intro- duced and advocated by Senator Putnam, was passed. It invalidated future conveyances to priests and bishops in their official character, and all future conveyances of lands for purposes of religious worship unless made to a religious corporation organized under the laws of the State; and it declared that such property shall be deemed to be held in trust for the benefit of the congregation using the same. Soon after the passage of this act, terms of peace between the St. Louis trustees and the authorities of the Church were arranged, and no further discord in that important congre- gation has appeared. In 1862 the church property act of 1855 was repealed, and in the next year, by an amendment of the earlier law, the incorporation of Roman Catholic Churches was made the same as that provided formerly for the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Dutch Reformed.
The long controversy had excited much feeling, both locally and generally, throughout state and nation, and must have been trying to the spirit of Bishop Timon, who had nothing of arrogance or a domineering temper in his kindly heart. None who knew him or who looked on his face without prejudice could believe that any hardness of per- sonal feeling had to do with his firm enforcement of the law and discipline of his church. There was never in Buffalo a more winning representative of Christianity than he.
During the years over which the St. Louis Church troubles had extended the general growth of the Catholic Church in Buffalo was not checked. A congregation was formed at Lower Black Rock, in 1847, which met in a rented room until the following year, when a small framed
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CULTURAL EVOLUTION
building was erected for church services and for a school. In 1853 St. Xavier's Church was built for this congregation, and it has been greatly enlarged and improved in later years. St. Boniface Church had its beginning in 1849, in a framed structure, which gave place to a brick edifice in 1857. The parish of what is now the Church of the Im- maculate Conception was organized in 1849, and named St. Mary of the Lake. The original church was a framed building; the present church was built in 1856 (but recon- structed later), and renamed The Church of the Immaculate Conception, in honor of the dogma which had been pro- claimed not long before. St. Peter's French congregation was formed in 1850, of French-speaking people who with- drew from St. Louis Church, and who bought from the Baptists a plain brick church building which the latter had erected, at the corner of Washington and Clinton streets, fourteen years before. This was occupied by the French Catholics until 1898 or 1899, when it was sold, to give place to the Lafayette Hotel, and a splendid new St. Peter's was built in 1900 at the corner of Main and Best streets. In the outskirts of the city, on Main Street, St. Joseph's parish was formed in 1850. Its original church was replaced by a larger and finer structure about 1886.
In 1850 Bishop Timon went abroad, and after his return he issued a pastoral inviting contributions to the erection of a cathedral in the city. On the 6th of the following February the cornerstone of St. Joseph's Cathedral was laid. The Bishop had visited Mexico to solicit help in the building, and had obtained contributions in Spain and other parts of the world. The work of construction went forward steadily, and the cathedral was finished sufficiently for dedi- cation to use in July, 1855. It is a stately Gothic edifice, designed by Patrick C. Keely, having a length of 236 feet, with 126 feet length of transept and 90 feet width of nave.
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ST. JOSEPH'S CATHEDRAL
Wishing to give his cathedral the distinction of a sur- passingly fine chime of bells, Bishop Timon, in 1865, ordered an arrangement of forty-three bells from a famous bell-foundry at Paris. The bells were cast in 1866, exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1867, and arrived in Buffalo in 1868. Including a duty of $2,200, their cost when they reached the cathedral was nearly $24,000. The tower in which they were hung, having no proper openness, proved very unsuitable for the purpose. The sound of the bells was muffled, and the lack of an airy belfry caused rusting of the mechanism by which they were to be rung. A grievous disappointment resulted, and for more than thirty years, after about 1875, the famous chime never uttered a sound, except from two of its bells. In the spring of 1907 an electrical apparatus for the ringing was con- structed, and the chime is now heard occasionally, but only near at hand, being stifled in the enclosure of the tower. It is to be hoped that at some time, not distant, the bells may swing in a proper campanile, and radiate the charm of airy music which the good bishop expected them to do. There are probably few, if any, finer carillons in the world.
In 1851 another part of the St. Louis congregation with- drew, and held services for a time in the basement of St. Peter's French Church. The Bishop then conveyed to the Jesuit Fathers, who conducted these services, a piece of property that he had bought on Washington Street, subject to the condition that they build a church for the Germans, and a college. This was the origin of St. Michael's Church, first built in 1852, and rebuilt in 1867, and the origin of Canisius College. In the same year Bishop Timon took steps toward creating another institution of learning, by inviting three Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate from Montreal to take charge of the Diocesan Seminary. They opened their work that year in temporary quarters,
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but in the next year the old County Poor House property on Prospect Hill was bought and the buildings fitted for their use. The Seminary lacked support, and was discontinued in 1855; but Holy Angels' parish was formed, under the charge of the Oblate Fathers, and a church for it was built in 1858
To relieve the St. Patrick's Church, now overcrowded, a new parish was created in the Hydraulic region, in 1853. A small framed church built for it received the name of St. Vincent de Paul; but exchanged names, in 1855, with the old St. Patrick's Church, when the latter became St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum. Another church, St. Bridget's, arose in the same year, 1853, on Fulton Street. It grew out of a Sunday School, conducted since 1850 by members of a society of St. Vincent de Paul. An interval of five years then passed before the adding of another to the Catholic churches of the city. This was St. Anne's, established by the Jesuit Fathers, on Emslie Street, near Broadway. The original small brick church of the parish is now represented by a large Gothic edifice which cost $120,000. After six years more there was need again of an added parish and church for families on and near Humboldt Parkway. A chapel named St. Vincent's was built for them at the corner of the Parkway and Jefferson Street, in 1864. At the time of this writing the parish of St. Anne's is preparing to cele- brate its golden jubilee, August 24-26, 1908.
Bishop Timon was now greatly broken in health, and two or three years of extreme feebleness, but indomitable persistence in labor, preceded his death, which came on the 16th of April, 1867. He had preached in the cathedral only two days before. His successor, Bishop Stephen Vin- cent Ryan, who had been Visitor-General of the Vincentian Order, was consecrated in November of the following year.
In the interval, a new church, that of St. John the Baptist,
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BISHOP TIMON SUCCEEDED BY BISHOP RYAN
had been dedicated by the administrator of the diocese, the Very Rev. William Gleason. This, built at the corner of Hertel Avenue and East Street, accommodated a part of the former congregation of the Church of St. Francis Xavier. The next to be built, in 1872, was the Church of St. Mary of Sorrows, at the corner of Genesee and Rich streets, a plain brick structure, rebuilt in 1884, and super- seded in 1901 by a stately edifice of stone. This was followed, the next year, by the erection of the first Polish church, named for St. Stanislaus; originally a framed building, at the corner of Peckham and Townsend streets, but superseded by one of stone in 1884. Then came, in 1874, the formation of St. Nicholas parish, in the Cold Spring district, east of Main Street, where a small building served for both church and school until 1893, when a new church, at the corner of Utica and Welker streets, was built. In 1875 two parishes were added to the Catholic organiza- tion in Buffalo, namely: St. Stephen's in South Buffalo, provided originally with a plain brick church on Elk Street, which gave way before many years to a fine edifice of stone ; and the parish of the Sacred Heart, for which a church was built on Seneca Street, occupying a site running through to Swan.
There now came a pause in church-building until 1882, when the Church of the Assumption was built, at the corner of Amherst and Grant streets, to meet the needs of our increasing population of Poles. In the next year the parish of St. Agnes was formed, in the district beyond the stock yards, and services opened in a small framed structure on Benzinger Street. In 1884 a similar modest building, on Bailey Avenue, near Walden, called the Church of the Holy Name, was provided for a new parish in East Buffalo, which now assembles its congregation in a fine building of stone. In the same year, at another extremity of the city,
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another congregation was provided with a temporary church, on Bouck Avenue (now Lafayette) near Grant, where the brown stone walls of the Church of the Annuncia- tion have risen in recent years. A third Polish church, that of St. Adelbert, at Rother Avenue, Stanislaus and Kosciusko streets, was built in 1886, but burned soon afterward and rebuilt. A change of pastors in this church produced a secession and the organization of an Independent Polish Church. For the new parish of St. Columba a church was begun on South Division Street, near Hickory, in 1888, and occupied in an unfinished state until 1892, when a larger structure on a better site, corner of Eagle and Hickory streets, was built.
The original Bishop's House, adjacent to the cathedral, was vacated and the episcopal residence removed to its new building on Delaware Avenue, near Utica Street, in 1889. The neighboring chapel of the Blessed Sacrament was dedicated at about the same time. Recently this chapel has been enlarged and was dedicated anew by Bishop Colton on the 4th of April, 1908. In the next year a fourth Polish parish was formed, with services performed for it in a building on Beers Street. For an Italian population then beginning to grow very rapidly the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, on Court Street, was built and dedicated in 1891. But the Poles in Buffalo were multiplying still more rapidly, and made up a fifth and a sixth congregation within the next five years. One, formed in 1893, assembled for a time in a small framed building, but soon built, at the corner of Sycamore and Mills streets, the Church of the Trans- figuration, which was dedicated in 1897. For the sixth congregation, the Corpus Christi Church, on Clark and Kent streets, was established by a community of Franciscan Fathers in 1896.
The diocese was now to receive a new bishop, the death
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BISHOP RYAN SUCCEEDED BY BISHOP QUIGLEY
of Bishop Ryan occurring on the 10th of April, 1896. Always a man of delicate health, the labors and cares of the episcopal office had taxed his strength severely, and troubles with the rebellious Polish members of his church had had their natural effect. In February, 1897, he was succeeded by the Rev. Dr. James E. Quigley, who had been identified with the city and the diocese during most of his boyhood and active life. The choice of a bishop on this occasion had been determined under a new rule, decreed by the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, in 1886. The decree in question created in each diocese certain "irremovable rectors," to whom were given the right of suffrage in the election of bishops. By their suffrages, approved by the head of the church, Dr. Quigley became bishop.
In the first year of his episcopate the new congregation of St. Theresa's Church was formed, on the south side of Buffalo River, holding services in an old public school house until the completion of a fine edifice of brown stone, dedicated in 1899. Another parish formed by Bishop Quigley in his first year, from portions of St. Bridget's and St. Stephen's, was that of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, for which a large stone church building, at the corner of Sandusky and Alabama streets, was dedicated in 1900. Two parishes were organized in 1898, one at Black Rock, for which the Church of the Nativity was dedicated in 1903; the other in East Buffalo, called Visitation Parish, where a building for both church and school, at the corner of Lovejoy and Greene streets, was finished in 1899. In that year (1899) the parish of St. Mary Magdalene was formed, east of Humboldt Parkway, and the cornerstone laid of a building at the corner of Fillmore Avenue and Landon Street, which was finished the next year and which serves for church and school. The last creation of Bishop Quigley in this diocese was the Holy Family parish, formed in South Buffalo, in 1902.
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Early in 1903, on the death of the Archbishop of Chicago, Bishop Quigley was called to that greater See. He had acquired reputation as a vigorous opponent of socialistic theories, and his selection for Chicago is attributed to that fact by the Rev. Dr. Donohue, the historian of the Diocese of Buffalo. In his "History of the Catholic Church in Western New York" (from which much of what is given here on the subject has been drawn), Dr. Donohue says: "Chicago is the hot-bed of Socialism in the United States, and it was but natural that when the Catholic head of that great archdiocese died the church authorities there should look upon the gifted bishop of Buffalo as an available suc- cessor to their deceased archbishop, and a fit incumbent of the great See of Chicago. Bishop Quigley's name was on the list of the electors, and he was considered by Rome as the most suitable candidate for the Archepiscopal See."
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