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Chapter 2: 1830-1856: Down the Canada Road |
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To better understand the growth of Catholicism in the Augusta area that was germinated by the efforts of Father Druillettes, one need only to examine the growth of the city from the time Maine became a state in 1820. During the early 1820s, Augusta's population consisted primarily of Yankee Puritans who had established a strong Protestant congregation in the community. But on February 24, 1827, when lawmakers signed an act making Augusta the capital of Maine, this burgeoning community discovered that laborers would be needed to construct not only a capitol building, but also a federal arsenal, and later, a dam and a hospital for the insane across the Kennebec River. In 1830, the population of Augusta was 3,980. Work had begun on the State House the previous year. The word was out that laborers were needed to help build this granite building, for which the design had been modeled after St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The word had traveled into lower Canada, where the prospect for seasonal employment was attractive and immigration was possible, thanks in part to a road that stretched from central Maine into Canada. Up until this time, the Canada Road, as it was called, was used primarily for transporting livestock. Now it served as a conduit for the migration of French Canadians from the Beauce County region of Canada. Stretching from St. Georges-de-Beauce in Canada down into Bingham, the Canada Road in effect linked the Chaudiere River in Quebec to the Kennebec River in Maine. These residents from Beauce County relied on farming as the basis for their local economy. When failure to rotate crops cost the soil much of its fertility and a ferocious hailstorm destroyed many crops in 1829, the call for laborers in Augusta was heard loud and clear. Many who made the journey to Augusta stayed for only a few months, earning enough money to maintain or purchase new land back in Canada. But, as the Canadian economy soured in the 1830s, entire families journeyed to the capital city where they ended up settling. Many of the same economic woes that plagued the Beauce County region of Canada were also being experienced across the Atlantic Ocean in Ireland. There, the population, which consisted primarily of peasants who rented plots of land from English landlords, saw jobs drift to the mines and mills in England. As the economic foundation shifted from agriculture to industry, many Irish viewed immigration to the United States as the key to a prosperous future. When fares aboard ships bound for the U.S. were lowered, tens of thousands of Irish left their homeland behind, and landed in Boston, Quebec, and the Canadian Maritimes. Those who survived the journey brought with them many diseases contracted along the way, including cholera. The number of cases was so high the Canadian government was forced to set up "quarantine stations" to help prevent the spread of the disease. In 1832, construction on the Kennebec Dam was underway, and Irish immigrants who had come via the Canada Road began settling in the Augusta area. Word of the presence of cholera in Canada made its way into central Maine, and officials sounded the alarm about a potential outbreak in Maine. Efforts were undertaken to cope with potential outbreaks, and communities even went so far as to turn back the immigrants. In Augusta, citizens appointed at a town meeting urged the Governor to close the state's borders to further Irish immigration, and the towns along the Canada Road prevented the passage of any Irish into Maine. While cholera outbreaks were reported in lower Canada and many New England states, not a single case was ever reported in Maine that year. As Augusta's population approached 6,000, Father Ryan recognized the city would soon need its own parish. By May 1836, Bishop Benedict Fenwick authorized Ryan to arrange for the purchase of the Bethlehem Unitarian Church on the corner of Cony and Stone Streets, the current site of the Cony High School flat iron building, for $2,000. Bishop Fenwick sent his Father Patrick Flood replaced Curtin in March of 1837. Father Flood lived in Gardiner at the home of Martin Esmond, but his stay there was rather short-lived. Later that year the economy in Augusta took a downturn. By the end of May, Father Flood reported to Bishop Fenwick that the banks in town were on the verge of closing and there was little chance the parish would be able to pay the debt on the church building that year. That summer, author Nathaniel Hawthorne came to Augusta to visit Horatio Bridge, a classmate from Bowdoin College. In his journals, Hawthorne wrote of hearing the French and Gaelic tongues of the laborers who not only worked side by side, but also lived nearby in what he described as, "squatters colonies of sod huts and shacks" on Andros Hill, which is known today as Cushnoc Heights. A year later, in May 1838, the parish could no longer support a priest, much less its church. Father Flood returned to Boston, and once again Augusta became a mission of Father Ryan's parish in Whitefield. During this time, it was the local Protestant community that stepped forth to issue a plea on behalf of the Catholics seeking a resident pastor. On April 18, 1839, James D. Fisher, a Protestant at the Kennebec Arsenal wrote to prominent Catholic Martin Carroll, who was serving on the committee that would petition the bishop for a permanent replacement. In his letter, Fisher advised Carroll of some facts he hoped would, "carry great weight in inducing the Bishop to incline a favorable ear to his parishioners." Fisher pointed out that at the time there were roughly 400 men working on the Kennebec Dam, the U.S. Arsenal, or the Insane Hospital. He estimated that roughly 90 percent of them were Irish Catholics. What follows is an excerpt from that letter in which Fisher unveils the true reason for his concern.* Before the opening of the Catholic Church in this village, it is known, not only to you and me, but to every inhabitant of Augusta, that the streets of that town exhibited scenes of riot, tumult, and inebriation, as regularly as the Sabbath arrived, and that one or two constables were regularly parading the streets every Sunday for the suppression of such scenes - the actors in which were almost exclusively of the laboring class, and very generally Irish - but since the Church was opened, the quiet and peace prevailing has been remarkable, that that class of our population is now as distinguished for their orderly deportment, as they were formerly for their turbulence . . .
This set off a ferocious debate in the United States, particularly in the Northeast, where Irish immigrants became fearful that freed slaves would travel north and provide competition for jobs on which the unskilled and uneducated Irish relied so heavily. In December of 1840 Bishop Fenwick received an earnest petition from Augusta's Catholics informing him that their number had increased since the completion of the Kennebec Dam, and was likely to continue growing as the city's expansion persisted. Bishop Fenwick's response would come in the form of a goodwill gesture on the part of our neighbors to the north and two brothers from the southern Maine city of Portland. In just five years the emigration from the region of St. Georges-de-Beauce had become so significant, that the Bishop of Quebec assigned Father Moyse Fortier to travel to Maine and determine the locations and religious status of Canadians in Maine. A lack of time and financial resources prevented Father Fortier from conducting an extensive search, but in his travels, he stopped in Augusta long enough to say Mass, hear confessions and give religious instructions. The Canadian region responsible for providing laborers for a capital city still in its infancy was now serving as a linchpin to Augusta's Catholic community. During the early 1840s two brothers, the Reverends John and Patrick O'Beirne, would travel up from Portland occasionally to tend to the flock. It would not be until 1845 before the Catholics of Augusta would once again benefit from a resident priest, and even then it would not be for long. Church records indicate a Father Moore and Father Richard A. Wilson enjoyed brief terms in Augusta. The latter priest is given credit for purchasing a lot across the river on State Street for a new church site. In the meantime, Father Ryan had left Whitefield when he was transferred to Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and ultimately ended up being transferred to the Diocese of Chicago. It was in Illinois where Father Ryan built another church - similar in appearance to St. Denis - in the town of Lockport. Not only did the new church share the same design with its predecessor in Maine, but it was given the same name as well. The Reverend Dennis Ryan lived in Lockport at his brother's house until he succumbed to cholera in 1852. At the time of his death, Father Ryan, who is believed to be the first priest to have been ordained in the city of Boston, was also believed to have been the third oldest living priest in the United States. Ten years after the first Mass was celebrated in the Old Bethlehem Church, efforts were undertaken by Father Patrick Carraher to build a new church on the "Gas House Hill" section of State Street in Augusta. The decision to locate the new church on the opposite side of the Kennebec River reflected an increased population on the West Side of the city. In those first ten years, the Catholic community in Augusta saw nine different priests and its church revert to a mission of St. Denis three times. But in the ten years that followed, those same Catholics saw the doors open not only on a new church building, but on a new parish as well. The year 1846 was a busy one for the Catholic Church, not just in Augusta, but in the entire world. Pope Gregory XVI had died and Pius IX was elected his successor. In this country, the Provincial Council decreed that the Feast of the Immaculate Conception would become the patronal of the Church in the United States.
In November of the following year, the Reverend James O'Reilly replaced Father Carraher as pastor. During his three-year stay in Augusta, Father O'Reilly is credited with building the first rectory adjacent to the church building. He became the first resident priest to serve in Augusta.
By now anti-Irish sentiments were also becoming more and more commonplace in the Augusta area. That same year the Kennebec Journal chronicled the stabbing death of an Irishman named Mathew Kin Kennan in Hallowell one Saturday night. The paper described Kennan as "a peaceable and respectable man, not inclined to quarrel" who was assaulted by "five or six Americans" who had been drinking and later "began an assault by chasing the Irishmen that came in their way." The paper reported, "There seems to have been no other inducement for the commission of the crime but the desire to 'kill an Irishman.'" The newspaper described the incident as a "loud note of warning to parents and guardians of public morals in this community, and should convince them and the town authorities that something should be done to check the progress of rum and rowdyism in this village." |
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best preacher, Father Peter Curtin, to serve as the pastor of Augusta's new church. Father Curtin, however, had a difficult time adjusting to his move from Boston to Augusta, and, after just three months in town, he opted to leave the diocese.
In Maine, work on the State Street church was underway. The Ferrand family of Readfield played an integral role in the construction of the new house of worship. The family is said to have entertained priests in their home on a monthly basis. A skilled mason, and blacksmith, Mr. Ferrand would travel to Augusta every evening and join workers as they labored by torch and lantern light until 10 p.m. to ensure a timely completion of the project. On September 8, 1846, the doors to the church were officially opened and dedication ceremonies were held.