History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania, Part 70

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 1438

USA > Pennsylvania > Monroe County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 70
USA > Pennsylvania > Pike County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 70
USA > Pennsylvania > Wayne County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 70

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It now became apparent that the necessity was upon the society to change the site to a location better accommodating the community, now grown to a borough of some thousands of people, and also erect a house more commodious and in keeping with private tastes and public improve- ments.

Consequently a large lot, corner of Second and Eleventh Streets, on which was a commodi- ous dwelling, was purchased, and, in the spring of 1872, work preparatory to building thereon was begun.

July 4, 1872, the corner-stone of the present beautiful edifice was laid, with appropriate ser- vice, Rev. J. M. Reed, D.D., one of the mission- ary secretaries of New York, delivering the address.

The building is a fine brick structure, trimmed with stone, and in its exterior attractive, an ornament to the town which is distinguished for its pleasant physical features and artificial adornments. Its interior is most commodious for all manner of church-work. The first floor is partitioned into class-rooms, pastor's study, ladies' parlor, primary Sunday-school class- room, general chapel (which makes a dining- room of unsurpassed convenience and pleasant- ness) and kitchen, furnished with stoves and table crockery. The second floor is an inviting auditorium, of seating capacity for six hundred comfortably, and, with added seats, many more.

A large and pleasant parsonage, supplied with water and gas, stands on the same lot.

The history of the society for the ten years immediately following the conclusion to build is the record of a most crushing financial struggle,

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caused mainly by the universal depression of the finances of the country during these years. The church is valued at some fifty thousand dollars and the parsonage at some four thousand dol- lars, with a prospect that at no very remote date the entire indebtedness will be canceled.

The enterprise was inaugurated during the pastorate of Rev. J. O. Woodruff, and completed during the pastorate of Rev. H. M. Cryden wise. Its present membership numbers three hundred and fifty ; its Sunday-school nearly four hun- dred.

The records of the beginnings of " Method - ism" in Honesdale contain the names of such men as Father Genung, Mary Stewart, Derial Gibbs, John Griffin, Thomas Pope, William Parmenter, Thomas Hawkey, David Tarbox, Henry Heath, Thomas Kellow, Richard Spry, O. Hamlin, James Birdsall, Sr., Richard Dony, R. Webb, R. Henwood and others, to whom the succeeding generations owe a debt of gratitude.

The long list of praiseworthy pastors reads very nearly in the order as follows: Agard, Conover, Rowe, Mumford, Blackwell, White, Reddy, Owens, Barker, Cook, Mitchell, Harvey, Wyatt, Gidings, Olmsted, Tryon, Mead, Pad- dock, Cole, W. J. Judd, Woodruff, Crydenwise, Van Cleft, Harroun, Richardson and the present incumbent, W. L. Thorpe.

The present board of trustees arc John Bone, John Blake, D. L. Kennedy, B. F. Haines, J. C. Birdsall, Thomas Crossley, P. S. Barnes, E. H. Clark, W. P. Schenck. Present Sunday- school superintendent, J. R. Brown.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH .- The first traces of the Catholic Church in Wayne County are found in the forests of the northern town- ships. Some half-dozen of the early pioneers in Mount Pleasant were Catholics and the sec- ular department of our history records the names of these enterprising farmers and their earlier followers.

The Delaware and Hudson Canal brought a few Irish families to Honesdale in 1826, but up to the enlargement of the canal.their num- ber was inconsiderable. These were dependent on the zeal of priests residing at such remote places as Troy, Utica and Buffalo for the minis- trations of religion. On horseback, their chapel

packed into capacious saddle-bags, these de- voted men started out from their homes in search of the scattered children of their church. Along bridle-roads through unknown forests, lodging in the primitive log cabin or railroad shanty, sharing the coarse food and rough beds of the sons of toil they came to console the Irish exiles and preserve the faith of their children.

The writer of this sketch long enjoyed the friendship of two of these devoted fathers. One of them, Father Shanahan died a dozen years ago at St. Peter's Church, in New York City, where his name will long be in benediction. He was a man of profound and varied learning, who, despite his missionary work, found leisure to utilize a large and valuable library, which he bequeathed to his namesake, the Bishop of Harrisburg.

His home was at Troy, on the Hudson, whence he made long and tiresome excursions, as early as 1830, through Otsego to Cooperstown, down the valley of the Susquehanna, along Sullivan County among the scattered Catho- lies in the adjoining State of Pennsylvania, through Orange County and along the west shore of the Hudson back to Troy. The regis- try of the baptisms and marriages lie performed is preserved at St. Peter's Church, in Troy, erected by him, and which was long the only church there.

The other early missionary referred to was Father Walter Quarters, who subsequently erect- ed the first church in Jersey City, and after- wards the first cathedral at Chicago, of which his brother William was first bishop. He sub- sequently, on his brother's death, in 1848, returned to the diocese of New York, where he erected the first church at Yorkville, where he died full of years and the garnered fruits of a zealous life.

His first field of labor was at Utica, then an obscure village in the interior of New York, from which lie penetrated Northern and West- crn New York and along the southern tier of counties, searching out also the Catholic settlers in the adjoining State. St. John's Church at Utica, built by him, preserves the record of his functions in this county.

Subsequently Buffalo became a centre of

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missionary labor and the priest from there visited this county about 1835, and the record of his ministry is to be sought at the Church of St. Louis.

The rapid growth of the church at these great centres in New York compelled the pas- tors to remain at home, so that between 1835 and 1840 the county was indebted to missionary zcal from Philadelphia, Easton and Friends- ville, in Susquehanna County, at which places must be sought the record of the baptisms and marriages performed by the visiting mission- aries.

ST. JOHN'S ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

In 1842 the mining interests of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company had attracted quite a number of industrious Catholics to Car- bondale, and the tanneries in Wayne County had become each a centre of profitable industry, and aggregated a considerable number of Catho lics. These induced the bishop of Philadel- phia to send them a resident pastor, with Car- bondale for a centre, and assigning one Sunday in the month to Honesdale and the other Catholic settlements in Wayne County.

erected the first church at Honesdale, which was subsequently extended on both ends to meet the wants of the growing Catholic population.

Three years later (1845) Honesdale was erected into a separate parish, and Rev. P. Prendergast was appointed its first pastor. Up to this time the marriage register was kept at. Carbondale, whilst the baptisms were recorded at Honesdale, but after the advent of the resi- dent pastor both were kept at Honesdale. Father Prendergast, for reasons we shall specify further on, stayed less than two years, and was sucseeded by Rev. James Malony in the memor- able year of 1847, the famine year, when that immense influx of able-bodied men and women sought every field of remunerative labor, and the industries of Wayne County attracted their own share of it. The Erie Railroad, where work had been suspended, recovered from its torpor; the Delaware and Hudson Canal Com- pany enlarged their water highway threefold ; the Pennsylvania Coal Company was projected, with Hawley for the centre of its enterprise ; the tanneries were greatly extended, and agri- culture promoted, and as a consequence the labors of Father Malony were made correspond- ingly oppressive. He enlarged the church at Honesdale and erected the steeple. It was he who built the present church at Hawley in 1850, and in addition to his pastoral labors at Honesdale, and from Deposit to Port Jervisalong the line of the two States, he responded promptly to the calls of the sick and the dying. Some idea may be formed of his labors from the register of St. John's Church, which records two hundred and ninety-three baptisms for the year 1851. Early the next year his exhausted frame yielded to an attack of malignant typhoid, and in April, 1852, he was called to receive the rewards of a short but faithful ministry.

On the death of Father Malony, Dr. O'Hara, now bishop of Scranton, was put in charge of Honesdale, and was assisted by Father Kenny ; and German Catholics beginning to settle here, Father Etthoffer made them an occasional visit, as did Father Sharle, from Pottsville.

Towards the fall of 1852 Rev. James Power was put in charge, and soon after Rev. Father

Rev. Henry Fitzsimmons of Carbondale was the first pastor of the Catholics of Wayne County, and on his appointment, in 1842, he | Whitty was sent to assist him, especially in

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caring for Hawley and the Rock Lake districts, which by this time had grown into permanent importance.

The next year Father Whitty was put in charge of Scranton, just emerging into notice, whilst Father Daniel Kelly replaced him as assistant priest at St. John's, Honesdale. In the summer of 1854 Rock Lake and the tan- ning villages in the northern part of the county were set aside from Honesdalc, and Father Shields was placed in the new charge. He stayed but a few months, when it reverted to Honesdale until the appointment of Rev. Father Delanave to that mission. He being an Italian and unable to speak the English lan- guage intelligibly, of course, accomplished noth- ing, and was relieved of the charge by Bishop Wood on the occasion of his first visitation, in the summer of 1864, when Rev. Thomas Bre- hony was sent to replace him. Delanave per- sisted in hanging around the settlements for a a long time, to the no small embarrassment of the new incumbent. But Father Brehony was possessed of more than an ordinary amount of patience, and despite the obstacles he encoun- tered, he set to work to improve and advance the spiritual and material interests of his first charge, for hitherto he had been only assistant priest. How he succeeded the two commodious and tasty churches of the district attest. These he relinquished in the fall of 1870, and trans- ferred, free of debt and well furnished, to his successor, the present incumbent, Rev. John Judge, of Rock Lake, on his assignment to a new charge in Susquehanna County. Hawley continued in charge of St. John's, Honesdale, over a year after the separation of Rock Lake. But the enlargement of the Delaware and Hud- son Canal and the increased shipments of coal by the Pennsylvania Coal Company had pro- portionately increased the number of laborers, so that in the summer of 1855 it was found necessary to release Honesdale of its care, and make it the centre of a new district, having all Pike County and Paupack, in Wayne, for its limits.

Rev. Michael Filon was transferred from Lancaster County and placed in charge of the new parish. He was untiring in his efforts to

elevate the morale of his populous charge, and was more than ordinarily successful.

On the opening of the Honesdale Branch of the Erie Railroad he erected the little church at Lackawaxen, which then gave promise of all importance it has not realized.

In the summer of 1864 he was transferred to Philadelphia, and Hawley reverted to the care of Houesdale until a Father McCollum was sent there. He was dismissed in 1869, when Hawley again became dependent on Honesdale until the appointment, in the fall of 1870, of the present incumbent, Rev. J. P. O'Mally, who has already erected neat frame churches at Ledgedale, Milford and " White Mills," where the Dorflinger Glass Works founded a flourishing village in 1863, which has grown and continues to grow in population and prosperity, affording a hope that it will ere long become the centre of religious activi- ties. Honesdale remained in charge of Rev. James Powers until 1855, and he was succeeded in the four following uneventful years by Rev. J. Ahern, removed early in 1857, when Rev. P. J. O'Brien was appointed pastor. He re- mained until April, 1859, when he was trans- ferred to Wilmington, Delaware, and the present incumbent, Rev. J. J. Doherty, was transferred from Towanda Parish to St. John's, Honesdale.

Up to this the successive incumbents at Honesdale stayed too short a time to effect any appreciable clevation of the religious tone of the laboring people, who, after having completed the construction of the canal, settled down there to operate it. Canal towns are proverbially centres of dissipation. There bad whiskey cir- culates, and officers of the law are intimidated by the political power of its vendors from any effort towards its restraint. Homeless men and vagrants resort to canal towns for congenial companionship and idle occupation. Dancing- houses, too, abound there, and the lively tunes of burst bag pipes enhance the attraction of the " bar," and the saloon-keepers grow defiant of decency, ready to resent all secular or religious interference. The works at Honesdale were, besides, unfavorable to the active restraints of religion.

One after another, the pastors appointed to

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Honesdale found it a very pleasant parish-to leave, and they were but too glad to enjoy that pleasure just as soon as they could do so with- out exposing themselves to the imputation of cowardice or indecent haste.

The Catholic Church, as we observed else- where, was a stranger in the land, and it had been preceded by a very bad reputation ; and the new-comers were naturally regarded as ex- ponents and representatives of its creed and culture. And here were men born and reared in the church utterly defiant of the decencies of civil and social life and the restraints of law, desecrating the Sunday in debauch, drunkenness and public riot ; their haunts echoing yells and profanities ; their leaders growing rich, some on their recklessness and intemperance, whilst others drove a profitable " brokerage " in their votes, and others again openly impeached the pastors or sent around the whisper that priests were not above paltry embezzlement, and whilst souls might be safely enough entrusted to their charge, they oughit not be implicitly trusted with " higher goods."

No one can be surprised that a church so ignobly represented was without honor in the community, that the traditional hostility to its creed and its clergy was intensified one hundred fold, and that Honesdale became prominent amongst the other communities of Eastern Pennsylvania for its antipathy to the Catholic Church.

Other towns viewed it with jealousy or fear ; at Honesdale it was below contempt. Its place of worship was relegated to Texas, its people to Shanty Hill, where its pastors were ignobly lodged in a cabin, and came and went away un- honored and unknown to the rest of the com- munity.

It must not be inferred from this that there were no true representatives of the church at Honesdale, for there were hundreds. The great bulk of the settlers were orderly, but some one has remarked that " a hornet will agitate a whole camp-meeting ; " so a few tur- bulent, riotous men will bring reproach on an entire community of upright, virtuous people.

It is not necessary to go back eons of ages to discover the troglodyte man ; he is cotem-

porary with all the ages and numerous as ever to-day.

Wherever vegetation exists, there weeds will spring up spontaneously, and all they ask is to be let alone ; so, in all communities of men vices will pullulate, and all they ask is "to be let alone." The rapid changes of pastors at Hones- dale gave the vicious element all the immunity from repression it required, until it became openly defiant when first subjected to restraint, and howled like famished wolves around the pastor who first effectually resisted the spoliation of the fold.

In 1859 the present incumbent, John J. Doherty was transferred from Towanda to Honesdale, and it became apparent at once that he came to stay.

He purchased his own residence in the centre of the town ; he supplied his own horses, car- riages and the other comforts and conveniences of the affluent without any appeal to his people and it was evident their penury would not re- pel, nor the slander and contumely of their leaders intimidate him.

We dare not indulge in eulogy, and we trust it may be long before an "obituary" may record the trials and triumphs of the last quarter of a century of Father Doherty's pastorship at Honesdale; but we may, without impertinence, recall an interview with him shortly after his settlement here.

It had reference to a flagrant social grievance that we-there were three of us, all living yet -thought we could readily redress.

His reply was substantially this,-" Gentle- men, I am a young man, but I have been taught by sad experience the futility of attempting to force social or moral reforms on any people. There are few men wholly free from illusions, and their cure is not to be effected by abusing them, but by disabusing them. This will take time and much patience."

This gives a clue to his methods, and ex- plains his wonderful success in suppressing vice, and gradually ridding the community, to a great extent, of the human vermin that infested in- dustrious communities, as pickpockets do crowds to despoil the incautious or confiding.

We never heard him indulge in rant or in-

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vective, much less did he ever, under any pro- vocation, descend to vituperation. He un- masked vice whilst ignoring its presence, and thus cured its victims without subjecting them to the pain of moral cautery.

He persuaded men of the profitableness of right living and compared self-indulgence to " scratching the itch." The man who would enjoy this life, to say nothing of the future, must accustom himself to the discipline of self- restraint. He often urged men in the enjoy- ment of God's gifts to exhibit gratitude to the Giver, by at least forbearing to abuse them to His dishonor. After years of such practical preaching, eniphasized by example, it would be strange if men failed to be disabused of low views of life and the delusions of pleasure, and if in time they were not led to prefer " the straight lines of duty to the curved lines of beauty."

We close this hasty epitome of the Catholic Church in Wayne County with a brief summary of the result of Father Doherty's labors in the last quarter of a century, leaving details of re- mote results to future historians. The church, as a church, has emerged from obscurity into recognized pre-eminence as a restraining and elevating moral power. The people are sober, frugal, industrious, self-disciplined, respectable and respected ; the youth are educated and contribute a respectable quota to professional careers, law, medicine and divinity. The Catholic Church is architecturally unsurpassed in this end of the State, and its massive stone walls and rich stained-glass windows attest the munificence of the pastor who designed and car- ried on the work during three years at his own expense, before appealing for a dollar to the people. The interior decorations corre- spond with the magnitude and solidity of the exterior, and the choir, composed of amateur members, frequently attracts all the lovers of music to its rendering of the most elaborate compositions of the great masters.

The Catholic population attending St. John's Church, at Honesdale, has varied but slightly in a quarter of a century, and may be set down in round numbers at two thousand.

The neighboring settlements dependent on

Honesdale for religious service have greatly decreased, and some liave entirely disappeared in that time. Twenty-five years ago the tan- neries at Cherry Ridge, at Smith Hill and Al- denville had, in the aggregate, over one hundred families, but all are long since abandoned, from the exhaustion of the hemlock bark within ac- cessible distances; and the one yet operated, at the falls of Dyberry, will have exhausted its bark within a year, and will then also be abandoned, whilst the number of Catholics settled on farnis is gradually diminishing. Twenty-five years ago they numbered about seventy families within a radius of eight miles from Honesdale ; to-day they do not exceed fifty- six families, and several of these very poor. It is also evident that the sons and daughters of the more opulent farmers do not take kindly to agriculture, but as they grow up they seek more congenial and remunerative occupations in towns.

At Honcsdale itself the Catholic population is about stationary ; for though the Irish are no less prolific there than elsewhere, their chil- dren, as they grow up, are forced to migrate in search of a career, and very few content them- selves with the precarious pursuits of their parents. But we are not called upon to prophesy, so we leave the future of the church in Wayne County to future historians.

JOHN JULIUS DOHERTY, the subject of this sketch, was born at "Dungrood Castle," a small freehold property his father, Julius Do- herty, had inherited in Vale Sharlow, in the County Tipperary, Ireland, on November 20, 1820.

His father's youth was mainly spent with his mother's family in England, whither she removed on her husband's death, and where he acquired a taste for scientific agriculture and landscape gardening, rare at that day. On his return to Ireland he followed that occupation for a living, his patrimony being too small to maintain him and his family, which rapidly increased in numbers. His career involved oc- casional removal, and a residence more or less protracted, according to the magnitude of the improvements he was engaged to oversce.

He was always accompanied by his family,

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who were thus brought into familiar relations with families of the landed gentry by whom he was employed, and who made it as pleasant as they could for the stranger during his stay. This imparted a cosmopolitan character to the subject of our sketch very uncommon with his countrymen. Wherever his father resided lie punctually attended the best classical and math- ematical schools, and his father declined engage- ments wherever such schools were not accessible,

be familiarly called, to distinguish him from other Johns, profited by his opportunities, and how readily he entered into the self-reliant spirit of our country, is evinced by the fact that in the winter of 1836, whilst a lad, racy of the soil, he engaged with Mr. Adams, chairman of the district, to teach the public school at Adamsville, now a station on the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad, ten miles from Albany, before he had quite reached his sixteenth year.

and he preferred engagements on estates in | Kerry to much more lucrative ones elsewhere, because of superior opportunities for higher education. Hence he remembers schools and schoolmates in the city of Limerick, soon after at Lestowell, then at Tralee, then after three years' absence at Lestowell again, and then after two years back again to Limerick before coming to America in the summer of 1836.

How abundantly John Julius, as he used to

The following year, 1837, he was offered better pay, and took charge of the somewhat aristo- cratic school at Coeyman's, making his home at the opulent mansion of Colonel Abraham Ver- planck, whose family occupy high social posi- tion in the State.

In that year he was entered as a law student at Albany, and the next year (1838) he took the more convenient school at Watervliet, making his home at Colonel Lansing's hospitable mansion.

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At the close of that year he had his name transferred from Albany to the New York bar, on being engaged at Elmwood Hill Academy, in the neighborhood of the city, to teach the Greek language and book-keeping.

This was a somewhat famous school at that day, especially for Southern students. The principal, Professor Russell, was an intimate friend of Mr. and Mrs. A. T. Stewart, who almost invariably visited there Sunday even- ings.

The next June, at the opening of the vaca- tion, he was seized with typhus fever, through which he was watched with a father's care by Dr. William O'Donnell, subsequently coro- ner of the city, whose son, John O'Don- nell, has achieved prominence in the State. On his recovery he communicated to Bishop Hughes, just invested with the administration of the diocese, his desire to embrace the eccle- siastical state, and was immediately sent by him to Mount St. Mary's College, Maryland.

But partially restored to health, it taxed all his remaining strength to reach the college at the opening of studies, where he arrived on August 14, 1839. The bracing mountain air, pure water and varied recreations restored him to health, but he never recovered to the one hundred and sixty-four pounds scale he turned before the attack of typhus fever.

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History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania, Part 70

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co. Number of Pages: 1438

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 1438