USA > Pennsylvania > Cambria County > Loretto > Souvenir of Loretto centenary, October 10, 1899 : 1799-1899 ,Saint Michael's Catholic Church > Part 2
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LORETTO CENTENARY.
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mendous will, his nervous energy, his unswerving intensity of purpose, came to her at last as a complete surprise and through sorrowful experience.
Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, Prince of the Russian Empire, known to his own world friends as a handsome, ac- complished nobleman, a child of fortune, was, as the Rev. Mr. Schmet, or Smith, "the first born of the Catholic Church in America -- hers from the first page in his theology to the mo- ment he arose from the consecrating hands of the Bishop;" for although he was the second priest ordained by Bishop Carroll, yet he was the FIRST in this country to have con- ferred upon him all the orders up to the sacred priesthood; the Rev. Stephen Badin, the first to be ordained priest hav- ing received the Deaconate in France. In order to restore his physical strength, weakened by his mortifications, pen- ances and sedentary life at the seminary, Father Smith, as he was then generally called, was sent to a mission on the Sus- quehanna called Port Tobacco, a part of the Conewago mis- sion, but to the great anxiety of the Bishop he showed abso- lute indifference to the trying changes of the American cli- mate, his naturally impetnous temperament leading him in his zeal for a saintly life, to take great risks. There was a short period of residence at Port Tobacco, followed by anoth- er at Conewago, near Gettysburg, and then he returned to Baltimore, where he remained untilsome timein the year 1796, when he again took up the work that Bishop Carroll had planned for him, and traveling to and fro throughout the great frontier district of the Conewago mission he ministered to the Catholics scattered through the forest from Cumber- land, Md., to Huntingdon and the heart of the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania.
His first journey to the mountain region destined to hold for him his life work, was taken in response to an urgent call which came to him at Conewago the summer after his ordi- nation. A rough Indian trail led him through a primeval forest to a settlement high up on the Allegheny mountains, the furthest outpost of civilization, where he fulfilled lis mis- sion, said mass in the largest of the rough log huts, and im-
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pressed by the beauty and magnificence of the scenery, as well as inspired by a desire to help the struggling settlers, he purchased a tract of land for himself.
The story of Prince Gallitzin's early experiences, the se- vere schooling which taught him more mildness than his im- perious impatient nature had ever known, is both edifying and interesting, but lack of space forbids entering upon it in detail, anymore than to say that the wise and good head of the church in Baltimore found it necessary to admonish the stren- uons young priest to be less prodigal of authority, milder in demeanor, gentler in his methods.
At last, and most unexpectedly, he was called to his work. The little community which he had visited during his stay at Conewago was sometimes known as McGuire's Set- tlement, and later was called Clearfield. In response to a request from the settlers, who had not forgotten his first ministrations, and in accordance with his own earnest desire, Bishop Carroll assigned him to an arduous post, a field as yet untilled and unbroken.
In July, 1799, Father Gallitzin arrived upon the scene of his life work, full of zeal and inspiration, such as can alone animate the hearts of those who feel that their one desire in life is to save souls. His high hopes, fiery energy, and self- effacement recall the similar devotion of the Jesuit martyrs of Canada and the Northwest. His ambition was to found a church in the wilderness, a community free from worldli- ness, forever apart from the vexing questions which were shaking society to its foundations, from which, in time, should flow a reviving, kindling influence, a spirit of trne Catholi- cism which would leaven the spiritnal and national life of the United States.
It was a glorious though a rugged country where he chose to plant the ensign of his Church, and to sow the seed of a perfect spiritual life in which his community should grow and thrive. The gracious curves and sinuous lines of the grand old Alleghenies were softened then, even more than now, by the variegated forests which covered the land with dense foliage. In every little valley and dale were clear
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streams and crystal springs; the atmosphere was unpass- ingly pure and elastic; and the broad outlook on every side was in perfect harmony with the vast religious purpose which had taken possession of his great missionary soul. He en- tered mpon the work with a joyous, buoyant enthusiasm, which, though sadly tried, was never entirely exhausted, and upheld him to the last through trials and disappointments which seem to find no parallel except in the lives of the Cath- olie priests and pioneers in New France.
A log hut was built on the hillside, one-half mile from the chief MeGnire farm, in which the heir to a Russian princi- pality lived contentedly. With eager helpfulness his people set to work. Under his direction and at his expense, the first church on the Alleghenies was built of logs hewn from the primeval forest which surrounded it on every side. Great preparations were made for its solemn dedication to St. Michael; the women of the parish made many candles, and through the snow drifts the men dragged laurel boughs and hemlock with which to hide the rough walls. From far and near the worshipers gathered, including hunters and trap- pers, in the motley crowd that filled the mountain sanctuary.
It was on Christmas Eve, the last Christmas Eve of the last century, December 24th, 1799, that Father Gallitzin cele- brated the mass, and placed the only house of God from the Susquehanna to the Mississippi under the protection of St. Michael.
And what manner of man was this, who, forsaking pa- rents and country, wealth and distinction, had built an altar in the forests of the Alleghenies? Tall and stately, his bear- ing was decidedly soldierly, his figure slender, his complexion clear, his eyes dark and flashing. His head was rather long, his nose aquiline, and though his features were regular and eminently aristocratie in monld, they were not devoid of force and character. Trained to every form of exercise as befitted a nobleman's son, destined to military service, he was above all things a superb horseman. His education had left no field of intellectual activity untouched, and, to a knowledge of history, philosophy, and the languages, he added some ac-
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quaintance with science. His voice was charming in conver- sation, though terrible in its force when he spoke in displeas- ure, and its exultant richness of timbre when intoning the service of his Clmreh was such that those who heard him could not express themselves in terms unmoved by its thrill- ing effect.
His own story of the first impressive service, his great hope of building up a prosperous Catholic community, his profound joy in his self-abnegating work, was written to Bishop Carroll, on the ninth of February, 1800, and is told in direct and simple language. His life in Europe was as the memory "of old, forgotten, far off things, or battles long ago;" and with heart and soul he threw himself into the "familiar matters of to-day." He lived simply and even rudely in a log cabin, slept upon the floor with a book for a pillow, ate coarse food, wore coarse clothing, was untiring in his manual labor for his people, unrelenting in his austeri- ties. It was a solitary life with no intellectual companion- ship; long tramps on foot over Indian trails, long journeys on horseback to isolated settlements to minister to the sick and dying; hours of fasting and prayer in a church that was never warmed by a fire; but it was lived in cheerfulness. and brightened by buoyant hope. For him the light shown clear- ly and from one place.
In 1802 Prince Gallitzin became an American citizen, his naturalization papers having been granted to him by the court of Huntingdon county under the name of Augustine Smith, by which he was still generally known; and shortly after occurred the first of a series of unfortunate incidents and perplexing problems connected with his family relations and financial affairs, and resulting in serious inconvenience and not a little sorrow. The prince, his father, who had never been entirely reconciled to his son's career, and who had been very anxious to see him once more, died suddenly in Brunswick, Saxony, in March, 1803, without leaving a will. His mother implored, him to return to Europe, in letters whose pleadings and tenderness it must have required iron strength of soul and purpose to resist. Not only did the
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Princess Amalia long to see her son once more, but the ad- ministration of her husband's estates was complicated by Russian law and his death in Saxony, and still further ham- pered by Demetrius' American citizenship, ordination to the priesthood, and absence from his old home. His friends and the friends of his family in Russia and Germany added their entreaties and warnings to those of the princess; Bishop Carroll not only gave his sanction and permission, but urged him to make the journey in order to save his inheritance, but Father Gallitzin could not see his way clear to thus suddenly desert his post, even for a fortune to be applied to the fur- therance of the divine work to which he was giving his life.
He went to Baltimore to convince the Bishop that it was impossible for him to return to Europe even for a short time, stating as his reason that he had been the cause of many Catholic families having settled in the mountains, that the parish was poor and struggling and needed his constant care, and there was no one to whom he could surrender his post even for a time, as priests were few and the number of Cath- olie settlers in Pennsylvania and Maryland was constantly increasing.
Of all the sacrifices that the Russian Prince made during a life of unceasing abnegation, none so rent his heart as this voluntary surrender of the last hope of seeing his mother. Doing the best that he possibly could in the circumstances, Prince Gallitzin appointed as his agents, Baron von Fursten- berg, prime minister of the Elector of Cologne; Count Fred- erie Leopold von Stolberg, and Count Clement Augustine von Merveldt, and they, together with the princess, in their ef- forts to secure his inheritance entered into an expensive and practically fruitless litigation which lasted many years.
In 1808 the news was sent to him that in consequence of having adopted the Catholic faith and clerical profession he was excluded from any share in his father's estate, and that (his mother having died in the meantime) his sister was sole heiress. This decision of the Russian Senate and Council of State was sanctioned by the Emperor and was therefore ir- revocable.
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: The Princess Marianne, or Mimi, as she was called, could not give away her property, but she wrote her brother that she would faithfully divide the income with him, and led him . to believe that it was her dearest wish to do so; but her promises were not kept. He received a few small remit- tances, and some years later the princess put an end to all hope of future financial assistance by her marriage, late in life, to Prince de Salmi, a profligate spendthrift, who soon squan- dered her large fortune.
The complications resulting from Prince Gallitzin's fail- ure to receive even a modest portion of his inheritance led to serious results, and cast a deep shadow of misunderstanding over many of the best years of his life, making it impossible for him to carry out many of his cherished plans and causing some of his best friends and parishioners to lose confidence in his ability and motives. This, together with a stupid tale which grew from the failureof the simple mountain folk to com- prehend the reason for his having changed his name, brought upon him troubles which may well be called persecutions,
The remittances which were sent to Father Gallitzin by his mother, and such fragmentary amounts from his right- fnl inheritance as were sent to him at long intervals by his sister, all told perhaps reaches the sum of $170,000, certainly not less than $150,000. This money was all spent upon his mission and for his people in elearing and buying land, build- ing houses and churches, and relieving the frequent and press- ing immediate necessities of a poor and struggling commu- nity. Prince Gallitzin was robbed and cheated by those in Europe who should have been faithful to his interests, and his agents, all of them men illustrions and noble, seem to have been credulous and even criminally negligent in carrying out their charge.
Of all the incidents in this distressing phase of his his- tory nothing seems more unnecessarily unfortunate than the disappearance of a large sum of money obtained from the sale of a valuable collection of Grecian and Roman antiquities, which the princess had bequeathed to her confessor, the Rev. Dr. Overberg, to be sold for charitable or educational pur-
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poses. The King of Holland bought the collection for $20,000 with the clear understanding that the money should be sent to his old friend Prince Demetrius, for use in his mission in the United States. But the proceeds fell into the hands of Prince De Salm, who sent Father Gallitzin less than half, re- taining the rest for his own nse.
In the meantime, the Russian Prince and Priest was mak- ing the history of a portion of the great state of Pennsylva- nia. The town that he laid out, partly on his own land, he named Loretto, in honor of the celebrated Italian shrine. In 1804, preliminary steps were taken to form a new county out of Huntingdon and Somerset, and three tiny settlements, one of which has entirely disappeared, not one stone being lefton another, disputed the honor of being chosen for the county town. The superior claims of Loretto were urged by Father Gallitzin over those of the more flourishing Ebensburg and the ambitious Beulah.
The new county was named Cambria by the Welsh who had settled it in large numbers, and the Welsh community of Ebensburg obtained the coveted distinction, thus leaving Lo- retto to develop on purely spiritual lines and Beulah to a fate which was soon to overtake it. It cannot be denied that Prince Gallitzin's ways with his congregation were to a eer- tain extent those of a Russian autocrat, though tempered with spirituality, animated by purity of thought and purpose, and inspired by the highest and loftiest ambition a human soul could have. It was hardly to be expected that a delicately organized, high-born, splendidly educated, intensely refined and sensitive aristocrat could live exactly on the same plane as that of the backwoods people among whom he chose and wished to cast his lot.
His very sacrifice which to us seems so noble was to them beyond comprehension, and aroused the suspicion ever latent in small and vulgar minds. His rigid rules and stern admin- istration of moral law chafed the rougher element; his nneom- promising attitude to the evil doer aroused antagonism, and his insistence on simplicity and seriousness did not always find compliance. He was the temporal as well as spiritual
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head of his flock; a slight knowledge of medicine combined with good common sense in such matters enabled him to pre- scribe and care for the sick when doctors were hard to find or impossible to get, and in the worldly interests of his con- gregation he made froquont long journeys to Greensburg and Lancaster.
He was judge and magistrate, as well as lawyer, physi- cian and priest; he settled family quarrels as well as legal dis- putes, and imposed penalties and punishments. The habit of command was strong in him and allied with a slightly credu- lous disposition and an arbitrary manner was the cause of many of the petty annoyances and persecutions that embit- tered his life during the first decade of this century and sadly interfered with the ideal of perfection for which in his com- munity he had so carnestly prayed.
In those days the fire of youth and a Russian temper- ament still influenced his ways, his opinions, his decisions; and though no labor was too humble, no service too arduous, and no call unanswered, there swept over the community a wave of dissatisfaction and even hatred which for a time threatened to destroy its existence. The orection of a new county, and the rapid settlement consequent on the opening up of new districts, brought politics into the factional dis- turbances at Loretto, and in this as in certain other instances, Prince Gallitzin, who very naturally was a staunch Federalist, was not in sympathy with the rougher clement which in this part of the stateconstituted the Democratic-Republican party. Those who led the rebellious element, a very noisy calumni- ous and vicious but fortunately small part of the congrega- tion, took their complaints to Bishop Carroll, from whom they received no encouragement and a decided reprimand. Fath- er Gallitzin was seriously disturbed by the controversies and quarrels which for a time raged about him. His letters to the Bishop show how very unhappy he was that he should be so misunderstood and slandered, in many cases by men under great personal obligation to him, and such words of advice, confidence and encouragement as the Bishop wrote him were gratefully received.
REV. DEMETRIUS A. GALLITZIN. PASTOR 1799-1840.
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In the midst of these troubles and perplexities, in the au- tumn of 1806, a messenger from Baltimore brought to the lit- tle log house on the mountain the news that the Princess Amalia, Fürstin von Gallitzin, born Gräfin von Schmettau was dead. The letters which passed between the Prince, Bishop Carroll, Count von Stolberg, Dr. Overberg and the Princess Mimi are most edifying and beautiful reading. Even at this. distance of time one keenly sympathizes with the profound sorrow of the self-exiled son who was most in touch with his mother during the years of separation, 'and who had perhaps never given up the hope of seeing her again. Princess Amalia has been the subject of memorial sketches in many lan- guages. She was a woman of great energy and keen intellect. Her tastes were æsthetic, yet she was able to think clearly and logically, and her mastery of speculative philosophy placed her in an intellectual atmosphere far above most women of her time. A tremendousinnerimpulse impelled her toward self-cultivation, the highest and purest ambition stimulated her to seek perfection both for herself and her children, and a. strict moral standard built upon moral principle and a true philosophy, kept her from yielding to the temptations of worldliness and vanity to which her exalted station, her tal- ents, her beauty, and her charming personality rendered her susceptible.
One more bitter experience imposed by those of his own household followed close upon his domestic bereavement, and for a time Father Gallitzin's influence was again weakened and his soul tired by defamations and forged letters. It seems almost incredible that the self-denying and beautiful spirit, whose personality at this distance of one hundred years is still felt as a benediction wherever his name is known, should have suffered such distress and torment at the hands of those for whom he was giving his life: and it is horrible to relate that at the critical point of the battle that raged so fiercely around him, personal violence was attempted, and that but for the stout heart and strong arm of one John Weak- land, Father Gallitzin would have met the fate of Becket. But the civil courts and the head of the Catholic Church in
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America upheld his authority and rendered legal decisions in his favor; some of his tormentors repented, publicly re- tracted their accusations, and apoligized for their behavior, and the long, wearisome contest was over.
The trials which accompanied it were mean ones, the de- tails were petty and loathesome, and the solitary man who en- dured them and met his enemies point by point, though re- joicing in his victory and happy in the returning and radiant contideuce of his people, was sadly broken in health and spirit when that chapter of his life was closed. Financial obliga- tions, it is true, continued to harass him for many years, but his stern integrity, severely simple rule of life, and benefi- cent, loving spirit enabled him to dominate his entire juris- diction, the leader and the father of his people. In his own name Prince Gallitzin had contracted for largo tracts of land for the use of the Church and for homes for the congregation. He built a fine grist mill and enlarged the church building, but his remittances failed to come regularly and were dimin- ished in amount after the Princess Amalia died, and he soon found his temporal affairs in confusion. This embarrassment forced him into a wider acquaintance with lawyers, magis- trates and business men throughout the state than he would otherwise have had, and many of the friends so made have borne testimony to his logical arguments, his flashes of wit, and rare charm in conversation. His letters written in those days tell of his aims and his projects, his needs and experi- ments. They contain allusions to the political affairs of the nation and the county, and to his failing health.
In a letter to Archbishop Carroll, who had been elevated to the Archbishopric of Baltimore in April, 1808, written in September of that year, Father Gallitzin says, in reference to his desire for an assistant: "It is my wish to contine myself within the limits of Cambria County, which alone would be more than sufficient to occupy two clergymen. My best time is past ; I am upon the brink of thirty-nine, and besides its be- ing contrary to the weakness of my constitution to ride about much and live upon every kind of diet, I find I could render muore essential services to the mission by being more at home
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and carrying on a more regular, correspondence with some able friends in Europe, of which Ihave received some, very broad hints.". In addition to his appeal for an assistant priest, Father Gallitzin also implored, financial aid, both from his sister, who had utterly failed in her promises and her duty, and fromt the Archbishop, who could not help him because he was himself in debt, and the Church still in the depths of pov- erty. Though his debts were of a kind which at the present time would be called Church debts and. would have to be met by the congregation, he assumed them as his own, and the burden was all the more distressing since, had he received his rightful inheritance, he would have been able to pay them many times over.
An additional torment was the fact that many of those for whom he had incurred debts had come to Loretto in con- sequence of inducements he had held out, and some among them were so ungrateful for past and present favors and kindnesses that they complained loudly.
His own life was one of extreme frugality, and his self- denials, combined with the distress consequent upon his financial troubles, alnost wrecked his health, which had never been robust, and led him to the brink of utter despair.
But relief eame at last in the shape of a long delayed remittance from Europe and money furnished both from known and unknown sources.
At the close of the year 1809 the embarrassment of the confusion of names was also cleared away by an act passed by the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, which authorized him to establish his name, Demetrius Augustine Callitzin, and to enjoy the same benefits and privileges to which he became entitled by naturalization under the name of Augus- tine Smith.
From this painful story of debt, disappointment and broken health it is a pleasure to turn to the lighter picture of Prince Gallitzin in his personal relations with his flock; for the priest who was stern in rebnke and terrible in anger, whose keen eye never failed to detect the slightest wrong doing, who hated meanness, irreverence and duplicity, was
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the warmest of friends, the most approachable of pastors, the most sympathetic of advisors. Even the little children of his parish brought to him their joys and sorrows, and he settled their disputes as wisely and firmly, and with the same affectionate interest that he displayed in the affairs of their parents. His dislike of finery and ostentation found preg- nant expression, as did also his hatred of intemperance ; and the establishment of a whiskey distillery near Loretto was a sore trial.
He entered into the amusements of his people with great zest, and the story is told that at harvest time he provided dinners for the laborers on the Church land, and toward evening would take his violin out into the fields and play for their entertainment while they brought the harvest home in rough wains drawn by horses decorated with vines and wreaths.
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