USA > Pennsylvania > Adams County > Conewago in Adams County > Conewago : a collection of Catholic local history : gathered from the fields of Catholic missionary labor within our reach. > Part 1
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ONEWAGO.
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A COLLECTION OF 2
CATHOLIC LOCAL HISTORY.
GATHERED FROM THE FIELDS OF CATHOLIC MISSIONARY LABOR
WITHIN OUR REACH.
An Humble Effort to Preserve Some Remembrance of Those Who Have Gone Before, and by Their Lives, Their Labors and Their Sacrifices, Secured for Succeeding Genera- tions the Enjoyment of Happy Homes, and All the Blessings of Our Holy Catholic Religion.
By JOHN T. REILY.
HERALD PRINT, MARTINSBURG, W. VA .. 1885.
·
FIST Cys Ka
1627
21/8, Most 83V
No. 6, Conewago Chapel ; new steeple ; view from Mc- Sherrystown side ;" Father Enders and Miss Sally Lilly stand- ing at the gate. No. 7, Sanctuary and new marble altar.
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DEDICATORY.
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To the Reverend Fathers,
JOSEPH ENDERS and FRAN. XAV. DENECKERE, Noble Gentlemen, Devoted Priests and Kind Teachers, Untiring Laborers in Every Cause of Religion, True Missionary Representatives, Faith- ful Disciples of Their Divine Master, and Worthy Sons of Ignatius de Loyola, these Pages arc Gratefully Dedicated, in all Consciousness of their Imperfection and Incompleteness,
BY AN HUMBLE PUPIL.
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BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION.
The Church has reason to rejoice, that Catholics are awakening to the justice and importance of reclaiming and preserving the early history and records of the religion of their fathers. Want, intolerance and persecution drove them from their native land. They came into a strange and un- settled country,-cast adrift in the Indian wilds of America, without homes, without a church or a government, and with- out anything necessary to life and happiness.
This generation, with all the grandeur and perfection of its civilization, can never fully understand nor in the least appreciate the sufferings and struggles of those who cleared our fields and built our homes. The enjoyments and com- forts we now possess, are ours only by inheritance as the fruits of their labors.
By the sweat of their brow and the valor of their arın, grew this mighty religious and social fabric,-the Church to teach, to bless and to save,-the State to guard and protect.
Before a settlement had been formed or a law enacted, the Church was here. Before a Calvert or a Penn had been granted a charter, the Jesuits watered the forests primeval with their blood. They planted the Cross and offered up the Holy Sacrifice, that soon there might be labor in the desert wastes before them. Others came, and in many a lowly wigwam and humble "Mass-house " were heard the praises of God, in the celebration of the divine mysteries of the altar. Follow the names in history or geography,-from the St. Lawrence to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, from Maine to Florida,-at every step there is some living evi- dence of the Catholic Church. Time and its changes can never obliterate them. Their impress is indelibly blended on every monument of greatness, on every work of genius ; in the laws and institutions of the country, in the lives of millions of its inhabitants, in the memory of millions more.
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BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION.
How fit and proper that the children of the Church should remember all she has done for them. From Rome herself sprang this desire, when Pius IX. of saintly memory opened to the world the treasures of her lore. Men took up the good work in this country ; historical societies were or- ganized, researches made, and Catholics have every reason to be proud of the history of their Church.
The East has a grand but unwritten history. The Church wept over the graves of the founders of that " Hap- pie Marieland." She in turn rejoiced over the cradle of her hierarchy in America. Every hill and valley and sub-division of country, bear names derived from the Catholic Church .- Every foot of ground is to her a land-mark. Will her great and gifted men never respond to the inspiration of the mem- ory of all that is Catholic in Maryland ?
Conewago is one of the oldest of the Maryland missions. Though in Pennsylvania, it was founded under the impres- sion, and no doubt rightly so, that it belonged to the Mary- land province. To write its history is an undertaking far beyond our ability. "Under other circumstances," we had once hoped to do it justice. Alas! they will never come .--- Partly educated and living with the Jesuits, misfortune turn- ed our course, and Remembrance alone remains.
The only motive that now prompts us, is the desire to add an humble mite to one of the grandest histories America will ever have,-that of the Catholic Church. It is intended simply as a collection of seraps gathered by the wayside of early life. Time and means and ability are wanting to put them properly together. The critic will say, better to have left it alone. Far better, for others much more capable have passed along and gone their way. Conewago's history was not written. This is a poor attempt at writing it, but at least the fragments we have gathered shall be preserved. By confining ourselves within the limits of our knowledge and purpose, we hope to avoid the more serious faults of rashness and error. One great desire is to write in a Catholic spirit, and in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church. That done, we hope the want of polish and learning may be the more readily overlooked.
MARTINSBURG, W. VA ..
Feast of Corpus Christi, June 4th, 1885.
THE CHURCH AND ITS HEROES.
How wonderfully dependent upon each other, are men and their actions ?. Great or small, near together or widely separated, there is a bearing in all things, for good or for evil. It may not be felt, nor seen, nor thought of, but it ex- ists ; and openly or silently, the tendency is carried out in time and beyond.
Who could have discovered a common end between the child born in the Chateau of Loyola at Biscay in Spain, 1491, and the hardy sailor planning and explaining to the learned men and before the Courts of Europe, in that very same year ! But there was. Conewago is an atom in the sea of results flowing from the lives and labors of Christopher Col- umbus and Ignatius Loyola. So all through life, from the humblest details that are passed by unnoticed, to the mighty events that mark the centuries in distinction.
Then let us for a moment skim over the main of discov- ery and settlement, and take a few flowers here and there from the beautiful treasure-gardens of American heroism, in which the fairest in bud or bloom is a Catholic virtue and a Catholic deed ;- happy enough if we may call our own the ravel-string that binds them.
" In the foreground of American history there stand these three figures,-a lady, a sailor and a monk. Might they not be thought to typify Faith, Hope, and Charity." -- D'ARCY MCGEE.
Columbus is the grand central figure. The lady, Isabella the Catholic, " one of the purest and most beautiful characters in history." The monk. Juan Perez, who brought Columbus back to confidence and success, when in despair he was about to quit Spain forever.
Columbus ! so much like St. Ignatius. Devoutly Cath- olie, pure and holy, he lived and labored only for the greater honor and glory of God. His devotion to the Blessed Virgin is the corner-stone of America's consecration to her honor
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and to the service of her Divine Son. In her honor he nam- ed his vessel and his discoveries ; and sailing under her pat- ronage, he sang her praises over all the broad ocean. IIe remembered his religion in all things,-himself in nothing.
Columbus is the type and model of his successors in the Catholic voyages of discovery,-Alonzo de Ojeda, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, Hernando Cortes, Cabral, Orellana, Magel- lan, and others. Wherever they went, these navigators and explorers planted the cross, and their memory shall perish, NEVER. Sebastian Cabot gave England a continent, but " no one knows his burial-place."
In the far north, the names of towns and rivers to this day give evidence of the religion of Cartier, Champlain and La Salle. In 1679, the latter built the first sailing vessel on Lake Erie. With his name goes that of the explorer of the Mississippi, Ferdinand de Soto,-the associate of Pizzaro and a worthy companion of Columbus. He slept in the bosom of the Mississippi in 1542. "The priests chanted over his body the first requiems that were ever heard on the waters of the Mississippi."
With such characters of nobility we may place the brave and generous Montcalm. What a difference between the early heroes Catholic Europe gave to America, and many of those who came from there in a more infidel age ?
It is impossible in this short space to follow the progress of discovery or the missionary labors. This broad land is marked by such foot-steps from one end to the other.
" Amid the West India isles, through Mexico, Peru, Brazil and the southern continent, the cross was borne by the missionaries of Spain and Portugal : the Norwegian, Irish, and later the French and English, bore it through our own more northern climes."
The Franciscan, Dominican and Jesuit achieved the greater part of the toil, and reaped the greatest harvests.
The Irish discovered Iceland and established christianity
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CATHOLIC LOCAL HISTORY.
there, then planted a colony on the southern coast of North America. A pagan Icelander, driven there in 983, was baptized in the colony.
The first American See was founded by Erc, consecrated by the Archbishop Adzer at Lund, in Denmark, 1121.
" The ancient tholus in Newport, the erection of which appears to be coeval with the time of Bishop Erc, belonged to a Scandinavian church or monastery, where, in alternation with Latin Masses, the old Danish tongue was heard seven hundred years ago." -- Royal Society of Antiquarians.
The Italian friar, Mark, 1539, traveled from Mexico through the deep forests to the Pacific, and named that vast realm San Francisco.
" In 1625, just a year after the Jesuits had reached the sources of the Ganges and Thibet, the banks of the St. Law- rence received priests of the order, which was destined to carry the cross to Lake Superior and the West."-BANCROFT.
Montreal, (the town of Mary,) founded in 1640, was the starting point of the Jesuit missionaries. From 1634 to 1649, sixty missionaries visited the wilderness of the Hurons, carrying the glad tidings of the Gospel to the surrounding tribes. Father Allouez, in 1665, on a voyage of discovery, heard for the first time from the Indians of the great river. " Mesipi." The first colony of French settlers in the Missis- sippi Valley was established by the Jesuit missionaries. In 1637, Marquette explored the Mississippi.
The Jesuit missions in America are the grandest monu- ments in the history of the Society. Sublime are the lives of its members. The Catholic Church has no more glorious record. Their labors, sufferings and deaths are as inspiring as the Lives of the Saints or the Trials of the Early Martyrs.
" Here a missionary is frozen to death, there another sinks beneath the heat of the western prairie ; here Brebeuf is killed by the enemies of his flock, and Segura by an apos- tate-Dennis and Menard die in the wilderness, Dolbean is
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blown up at sea, Noyrot wrecked on the shore ; but these dangers never deterred the missionary. In the language of the great American historian, 'the Jesuit never receded one foot.' " -- SHEA.
" Why be at war with history ? The Jesuits are there, in the outer gate of all our chronicles. Speak them civilly as you pass on. For us, cold compliments are not enough .- Our blood warms at witnessing their heroic virtue, and we are compelled to raise our voices in evidence of our homage. They were the first to put the forest brambles by ; they were the first to cross the thresholds of the wigwams of every na- tive tribe ; they first planted the cross in the wilderness, and shed their blood cheerfully at its base. Shall we not study their lives and recall their words ? Shall we not figure them on canvas and carve them in marble ? Shall we not sing the song of their triumph, and teach it to our children's children, until the remotest generation ? We have never had cause to be ashamed of them; and God grant they may have none to be ashamed of us. I ask again of those not with us, Why be at war with history ? The Jesuit is in the gate, and you can no more enter the first chapter of your own chronicles with- out meeting him there than you can enter Quebec in time of war without giving the sentry the countersign."-McGEE.
The priests who came with Columbus on his second voy- age, consecrated a chapel in Isabella, in Hayti, on the feast of Epiphany, 1494. The early Dominican and Jesuit mis- sionaries in Florida were murdered by the Indians, one after another. One grand deed of theirs was the liberation of all the natives of Florida, held as slaves in the islands. It stands out in bold contrast with the inhuman traffic afterwards car- ried on from that direction. Besides the wail of the dusky slave, that land is cursed by the groan of the exile and the lamentation of the flower of Ireland for its home and kindred.
In 1570, a band of Jesuit missionaries from Florida, with a converted Indian for a guide, found themselves on the lone- ly banks of the Chesapeake. They hurried into the unex-
CATHOLIC LOCAL HISTORY.
plored forests, eager to bring to the Red Man the light of christianity. Deserted by their guide, they perished by his ungrateful hand, at the foot of a rude altar on which the Holy Sacrifice was being offered.
This country has been redeemed by such aets of hero- ism. Who can recount them ? Many of them are not record- ed, for the fairest flowers always bloom unseen. Catholics may well be proud of American history. It is their own ; theirs in discovery, exploration and settlement; theirs in re- ligion, purchased by their blood ; theirs in peace and in war. in science and in progress, in its laws and government,-theirs in the peaceful possession of life, happiness and prosperity. Grandly their own, but not selfishly. There is not a blot of Catholic intolerance on its pages. It is the common country of a free and independent people.
May we not take the beautiful words of Fenelon, and with them exclaim : Oh Land of America! Oh sacred Land! Oh dear and common country of all true christians! And then we listen in rapt admiration to the end that so beauti- fully crowns the work of the scholarly Macleod :---
Who then has the true claim to the ownership of North America? The red Indian steps noiselessly forward and says, "It is !! For ages immemorial my fathers fished these wa- ters, or struck down the game in these yet undescerated for- ests." "I claim the land," saith the Spaniard, "I, who re- deemed those Southern pampas, and first taught the Gulf and the lagoon the sounds of Christian praise." " It is mine," says the fiery Gaul. "The snow-wastes of Canada were crimsoned with French blood : it was a French sword which tamed the fierce Iroquois, and tribes of every tongue, the roaming Algonquin, from the mighty ocean to the mysterious great lakes."
"The land is mine," says the English Puritan from Berks or Ihuntingdon ; or the English Cavalier from Derbyshire, York, and Cumberland. The Highlander, in gutturals deep
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as those with which he turned away from the red, red field of Culloden, demands at least the mountains of the Carolinas and Georgia, the cold coasts of Nova Scotia, and part of the shores of Saint Lawrence.
But we cannot grant to any one of these the fulness of his claim. Wherever they are found as agents acting sub- serviently to the fulness of our own claim ; wherever they shall seem to have advanced and aided that, we will give them the praise of worthy servants.
Reverence then for the silent Indian ; reverence, deep as justice, mute as himself, for the olden lord of this land ! Honor to the swarth Iberian who planted the yellow stand- ard of Castile on the shores of the Mexican Gulf; honor to the chivalrie Frank who swung the lilies out to the icy air of Canada : honor to the broad-chested Briton, for he named his first town Saint Mary's : honor to the sinewy son of the green old Island of Fire : honor to the patient toiler who came, singing harmonious choruses, from the arrowy rush of the Rhine -- but glory supreme to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all blessings are ! For whom and for His Mother, we claim as theirs, by right of first discovery and seizure, this North American continent. Glory to God, the Eternal, and honor perpetual to Immaculate Mary.
PENN AND CALVERT COME.
The history of Europe for two hundred years before the colonization of America, is one of warfare and perse- cution. The terrible tragedies that were enacted in the name of religion and patriotism, are recalled with horror in this more peaceful age and country. Humanity is the strang- est study of creation. Habit and custom are so strong in man that they cling to generations. To these add human
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prejudice, through which a ruling point is transmitted from father to son, carried from one country to another, and kept alive from century to century. The greatest blemishes on the history of America can be traced to their source, thous- ands of miles away and hundreds of years ago. The purely American record is fair in comparison with the fruits of an inherited prejudice, felt to this day in many ways and seen in many things.
It is not our purpose to review points of history ; but one thing leads to another, until we come to that humble part which is dearest to us as the object of our labor. For all the rest of the vast and ever-changing sea around us, it is sufficient to know that the Catholic Church has survived the ever-flowing and never-returning tide of the world ; and that this humble part of history we are about to record, came through the church and in all things belongs to her. We know the past. Faith steps in at the present, and beyond the twilight of the future into the growing shadows of its night, we see from the broken arches of London bridge the sad ruins before us ; and at the tinkling of a little bell adown where the chapel cross glitters in the sunlight stealing over the dark waters, every knee is bowed and every heart is hushed as of old, in the solemn silence of the Sanctus ! Sanc- tus ! Sanctus ! the last Hosanna of which will resound through eternity.
The revolutions in Europe drove the colonists to this country and settled America. Freedom of thought and free- dom of action were denied them in the land of their fathers, and they looked to the New World for happier and more peaceful homes. Persecution followed them, led by many an evil genius of mother-land intolerance. Every change of tyrant-ruler in Europe was severely felt in the colonies, until the glorious patriots with their taste of freedom could stand no more, and Independence was proclaimed in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Would that we could
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recount the struggles of the heroes of Independence, but you have the history of your country before you ; study it well and let your children drink it in from their youth, that this great Union of States and Union of Hearts may be preserved and perpetuated forever.
The first Pennsylvania settlement was made by the Dutch, in 1609. The Swedes and Fins settled along the Del- aware in 1627. Penn's charter was dated Westminster, March 4th, 1681. In December of that year, the first vessel arrived at Chester. Philadelphia was founded in 1682 .-- Penn followed an honest and peaceful policy in all his deal- ings with his people. Catholics should hold the Friends in respectful remembrance. Like Washington, Penn had a kindly feeling for Catholies, especially after passing through many trials himself. The laws of the mother-country and many of our own early enactments, must be taken into con- sideration when passing judgment upon the course of Penn. The influence of prejudice established by English law was great, and in the end overcame Penn himself. In the other States Catholics fared worse. For the cause of the severe penal laws in the Provinces, look to " the glorious revolution of 1688." Then arose the "No Popery " cry in New York, and " Down with the Jesuits." Massachusetts and Virginia. were thereby aroused against the Catholics. Under William and Mary liberty of conscience was allowed to all christians. "except Papists." Then it was that the " pious Acadian " suffered. In 1692, the Episcopal church was established by law in Maryland. Aets were passed " to prevent the growth
of Popery." Priests could not say Mass, nor teach, nor per- form any religious rite, under a severe penalty of the law .- Rewards were offered and imprisonment inflicted. One hun red pounds for sending a child abroad to be educated in the Catholic religion. The Catholic youth who upon attaining his majority refused to take the oaths prescribed, forfeited his lands by descent, and the next of kin being a Protestant succeeded. Catholic worship was prohibited in Pennsylvania
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in 1734 and 1736. The Acts of 1757, regulating the militia. did not allow Catholics to enter military duty or to have any ammunition or weapons in their houses or possession. Brighter days came. The Catholic, tried by persecution, was found true and loyal to his country and his God. He knew how to live, how to suffer and how to die. He sat in the Councils of the nation, and signed her great Declaration of Independence. Ile did not cease, though, to be persecuted by prejudice, and never will. His religion stands over and against him in this world. It ever did and ever will. This old-time hatred erops out here and there to this day .- But Catholics are respected and honored by the mass of American co-religionists. Their religion is recognized as a power for good. Let them guard it well, and keep aloof from all political entanglements, exercising their rights as Ameri- can citizens according to the dictates of their conscience --- sup- porting men and measures and not party. This persecution and opposition to Catholics was not born in America ; it has its origin farther back than Smithfield or Tyburn, farther still than Nero or Diocletian ; it is coeval with christianity itself, and is one of the strongest proofs of the true church, foretold by its founder, Jesus Christ.
Wm. Penn was born in London, Oct. 16th, 1644. He was expelled from Christ Church, Oxford, and disowned by his father, for being a Quaker. He was twice imprisoned for preaching in public. His possessions in the New World were taken from him, on suspicion of his being in league with King James in exile. These suspicions were declared unfounded in 1694, and he became a friend of King William. Burdened with debts, he closed his life in gloom and obscurity, 1718. The last claims of the Penns were purchased by the Legisla- ture of Pennsylvania, in 1779, for one hundred and thirty thousand pounds.
Sir George Calvert, Baron of Baltimore, was born in Yorkshire, England, 1582, and died April 15th, 1632. Hc was a man of wealth and position, and was in attendance at
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the French Court of King Henri IV., of Navarre, whose daughter, Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I., gave to Mary- land her name.
"In an age when religious controversy still continued to be active, and when the increasing divisions among Protest- ants were spreading a general alarm, his mind sought relief from controversy in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church." He resigned his political honors, retired to Ireland, and after visiting his settlement in New Foundland, he took up a grant of land in 1629, lying to the south of James River in Virginia. This grant he afterwards surrendered for the large and beautiful territory lying to the north of the Poto- mac. His charter was from Charles I., and descended to his son, Cecil, who was succeeded in 1675 by Charles Calvert .- The Calverts were deprived of their rights for a time, but were restored under Queen Anne as proprietors of Maryland and held their possessions up to the American Revolution.
Leonard Calvert, brother of Cecil, and about two hun- dred people, set sail in the Ark and Dove from Cowes in the Isle of Wight, on St. Cecilia's day, Nov. 22, 1633. They placed themselves and their ships under the protection of God, and invoked the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and St. Ignatius. They sailed safely up St. Mary's River, and on the 27th of March, 1634, took quiet possession of the Indian town of Yoacomoco; " and religious liberty obtained a home, its only home in the wide world, at the humble village which bore the name of St. Mary's." "The Roman Catho- lics, who were oppressed by the laws of England, were sure to find a peaceful asylum in the quiet harbors of the Chesa- peake ; and there, too, Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance." -- BANCROFT.
After nearly two hundred years a selfish prejudice ques- tions the motives which led to religious toleration in Mary- land. Had the persecuted colonists in the other provinces been granted this priceless favor, they never would have ask- ed from what motives it proceeded, but embraced it as the
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