EARLY ANNALS OF CATHOLICITY IN NEW JERSEY.
The first navigators who are known to have sailed along the seaboard, and perhaps to have landed on the soil of that part of America now called New Jersey, were Catholics, and in fact made their voyages before Protestantism was heard of. These hardy men were Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian in the service of King Henry VII. of England, who sailed from Bristol in the month of May, 1498, and, proceeding considerably to the north, afterwards turned south and followed the coast-line as far as the Chesapeake; and John Verazzano, a Florentine in the pay of the King of France, who, taking a southerly course to America in 1524, proceeded along the coast from Florida to the fiftieth degree of north latitude, and is supposed to have entered the harbor of New York. The earliest colony established here was about 1620, when Dutch Calvinists (emigrants from Holland) settled the town of Bergen; and in 1638, a party of Swedes, who were Lutherans, made several settlements on the shore of the Delaware. They were under the patronage of their celebrated Queen Christina, who later became a Catholic. In 1664, a grant of the country between the Connecticut and the Delaware rivers was made by King Charles II. of England—the Swedes having been subjugated by the Hollanders, and these in their turn by the English—to his brother the Duke of York, who afterwards was a sincere convert to the Catholic faith, and reigned as James II. That portion of this territory which is now New Jersey was sold by the royal patron to two proprietors, one of whom was Sir George Carteret; and it was in his honor that it received its present name, for his having defended during the Parliamentary war against the Revolutionists the island of Jersey, which is one of the so-called Channel Isles on the coast of France, and is full of ancient churches and other memorials of the Catholic faith, introduced there by S. Helier in the VIth century.
But apart from the name there was nothing that recalled the Catholic religion in New Jersey. The most intense anti-Catholic sentiment was prevalent, and the bitter fanaticism of the mother country was extended even to these parts with perhaps increased virulence. Thus, in 1679, the 26th of November was appointed a day of thanksgiving in the colony for deliverance from what was called “that horrid plot of the Papists to murder the King (Charles II.) and destroy all the Protestants!”—which was the infamous affair of Titus Oates, gotten up maliciously against the Catholics to have still another pretext for persecuting them. The whole province having been divided into two parts, called respectively East and West New Jersey, the latter was settled, to mention only the English-speaking population, mostly by members of the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, from England, but the former by Scotch Presbyterians and Congregationalists from New England; and of this part Robert Barclay was appointed first governor for life, but, having power to name a deputy, he remained in Scotland. This miserable man, after having become a Catholic in France, where he had an uncle a priest, who was at the expense of educating him, relapsed into heresy shortly after returning to his native country, where his religion was proscribed, and finally joined the Quakers, for whom he wrote the famous Apology. A circumstance in the life of this apostate shows well the constancy of the royal convert who lost three kingdoms for his faith, and must have reminded him of his own instability upon the same matter. Barclay was in London in 1688, probably on business connected with his government of East New Jersey, and solicited an interview with King James. The revolution was already breaking, and his treacherous son-in-law, afterwards William III., was on his way to dethrone him; when, standing by an open window of the palace, his Majesty observed to the governor that the wind was fair for the Prince of Orange to come over: whereupon Barclay replied that it was hard no expedient could be found to satisfy the people. The king declared he would do anything becoming a gentleman except “parting with liberty of conscience, which he never would while he lived.” The king was indeed a martyr to this principle, and how much it was despised by his Protestant betrayers may be seen, to give an example out of these parts, from the instruction given in 1703 to Lord Cornbury, governor of the Jerseys (as well as of New York), “to permit liberty of conscience to all persons except Papists”; and this barbarous intolerance continued as long as the colonies remained united to England. Every now and then glaring cases of anti-Catholic bigotry, calculated only to perpetuate civil dissensions sprung from religious differences, were found in the history of the colony; as, for instance, in 1757, when the principal edifice of the College of New Jersey at Princeton was named by Governor Belcher Nassau Hall—“to express,” he said, “the honor we retain in this remote part of the globe to the immortal memory of the glorious King William III., who was a branch of the illustrious house of Nassau, and who, under God, was the great deliverer of the British nation from those two monstrous furies, Popery and slavery.” About this period there were a few Jesuit priests in Maryland and Pennsylvania; and the earliest account that we have of Catholics in New Jersey is in 1744, when we read that Father Theodore Schneider, a distinguished German Jesuit who had professed philosophy and theology in Europe, and been rector of a university, coming to the American Provinces, “visited New Jersey and held church at Iron Furnaces there.” This good missionary was a native of Bavaria. He founded the mission at Goshenhoppen, now in Berks county, Pennsylvania, about forty-five miles from Philadelphia, and ministered to German Catholics, their descendants, and others. Having some skill in medicine, he used to cure the body as well as the soul; and, travelling about on foot or on horseback under the name of Doctor Schneider (leaving to the Smelfunguses to discover whether he were of medicine or divinity), he had access to places where he could not otherwise have gone without personal danger; but sometimes his real character was found out, and he was several times raced and shot at in New Jersey. He used to carry about with him on his missionary excursions into this province a manuscript copy of the Roman Missal, carefully written out in his own handwriting and bound by himself. His poverty or the difficulty of procuring printed Catholic liturgical books from Europe, or, we are inclined to think, the danger of discovery should such an one with its unmistakable marks of “Popery” about it (which he probably dispensed with in his manuscript), fall into the hands of heretics, must have led him to this labor of patience and zeal. Father Schneider, who may be reckoned the first missionary of New Jersey, died on the 11th of July, 1764. Another Jesuit used to visit the province occasionally after 1762, owing to the growing infirmities of Father Schneider, and there still exist records of baptisms performed by him here. This was the Rev. Robert Harding, a native of England, who arrived in America in 1732. He died at Philadelphia on the 1st of September, 1772. But the priest principally connected with the early missions in New Jersey is the Rev. Ferdinand Farmer. He was born in South Germany in 1720, and, having entered the Society of Jesus, was sent to Maryland in 1752. His real name was Steenmeyer, but on coming to this country he changed it into one more easily pronounced by English-speaking people. He was learned and zealous, and for many years performed priestly duties in New Jersey at several places in the northern part, and seems to have been the first to visit this colony regularly. In his baptismal register the following among other places are named, together with the dates of his ministrations: a station called Geiger’s, in 1759; Charlottenburg, in 1769; Morris County, Long Pond, and Mount Hope, in 1776; Sussex County, Ringwood, and Hunterdon County, in 1785. The chief congregation at this period was at a place called Macoupin (now in Passaic County), about fifteen miles from the present city of Paterson. It was settled in the middle of the last century by Germans, who were brought over to labor in the iron mines and works in this part of the province. Two families from Baden among the colonists were Catholics; and the first priest who visited them is said to have been a Mr. Langrey from Ireland. Mount Hope, not far from Macoupin, used to be visited by Father Farmer twice a year, and by other priests, as occasion might require, from Philadelphia. Except the Catholics in the northern parts, there were very few scattered about New Jersey before the American Revolution. The schoolmaster at Mount Holly in 1762 was an Irish Catholic named Thomas McCurtain, and one of his descendants is the distinguished scholar and antiquarian, John G. Shea. The Catholics in these colonies before American Independence were subject in spiritual matters to the Bishop (vicar-apostolic) of London, who used to appoint a vicar-general (the superior of the Jesuits in Maryland) to supply his place. After the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, the vicar-general. Father John Lewis, was the late superior of the order in this country. The visits of the missionaries to New Jersey seem to have been interrupted during the Revolutionary War; but a number of very distinguished foreign Catholics serving in our army honored the land by their presence in such a cause. Among them we find Lafayette, Chevalier Massillon, De Kalb, Pulaski, Kosciusko, and Mauduit du Plessis, the engineer officer who fortified Fort Mercer, at Red Bank on the Delaware, with so much skill that the attacking Hessians were thoroughly repulsed. In the months of August and September, 1781, the French troops under De Rochambeau marched diagonally across the State from Sufferns (just over line) in New York, by way of Pompton, Whippany, Byram’s Tavern, Somerville, Princeton, and Trenton. An army chaplain, the Abbé Robin, published a little book in 1782, describing this French expedition from New Port to York-town; but, regrettably, he gives his readers not a word about any Catholics that he may have met or heard of in New Jersey.
After the evacuation of New York by the British in 1783, there was a prospect of collecting the few scattered Catholics on Manhattan Island into a congregation, and the venerable Father Farmer used to go twice a year to visit the faithful there, across the northern part of this State, stopping on his way to officiate at Macoupin. On the 22d of September, 1785, the Rev. John Carroll, who had been appointed by the Pope superior of the church in the United States and empowered to give Confirmation, set out on a tour to administer this sacrament at Philadelphia, New York, and (as he writes to a friend) “in the upper counties of the Jerseys and Pennsylvania, where our worthy German brethren had formed congregations.” In this year Rev. Mr. Carroll computed the number of Catholics under his charge at sixteen thousand in Maryland, seven thousand in Pennsylvania, and two thousand scattered about the other States. The number of priests was nineteen in Maryland and five in Pennsylvania. We learn how small was the grain of mustard-seed of the church in this part of the world less than a hundred years ago, when we see that there was no resident priest at that time between Canada and Pennsylvania; and it used to be said contemptuously (so Watson has it in his Annals): “John Leary goes once a year to Philadelphia to get absolution.” This worthy man therefore, who was certainly living in New York in 1774, had to leave that city and cross the whole of New Jersey before he could perform his Easter duties. The earlier editions of Catholic books printed in the United States were generally gotten up by subscription, and a perusal of the lists of subscribers is interesting, as giving some idea of the number, zeal, and original nationality (conjectured from the form of patronymic) of the Catholics at the time. Thus, to the first Catholic Bible published in the United States, at Philadelphia in 1790, only six out of the four hundred and twenty-seven subscribers were from New Jersey. These are Joseph Bloomfield, Attorney-General of the State; James Craft and R. S. Jones, Burlington; John Holmes, Cape May; Alexander Kenney, near (New) Brunswick; and Maurice Moynihan, Atsion; but in considering this, the most interesting to us of any lists of subscribers to early Catholic books, we must remember that the names are not all of Catholics; and of these six from New Jersey the last three only are considered orthodox by Archbishop Bayley in his appendix to the History of the Catholic Church in New York (2d ed.)
The massacre of 1793 in the Island of Hayti drove a number of French Catholics to the United States, some of whom settled at Mount Holly, Elizabethtown, and other parts of the State, but we do not know that they did anything for the church. Catholic advance was to come from quite another immigration. In 1805, or earlier, the Rev. John Tisserant, one of the French clergy driven from home by the Revolution, was living at Elizabethtown. He was an excellent man, and may be considered the first resident priest in New Jersey, although he cannot be said to have been stationed here by authority. He returned to Europe in June, 1806. The minister of the Presbyterian church at Whippany (Morris County) from 1791 to 1795 was Calvin White. “His ministry, though brief, was useful,” says the historian. He afterwards connected himself with the Episcopalians, and finally became a Catholic. A conversion of this kind at that period was sufficiently remarkable, we think, to be mentioned in notes on the Catholic Church in New Jersey.
In the year 1808, the dioceses of New York and Philadelphia were erected, with the northern part of New Jersey within the former and the southern within the latter diocese. This arrangement continued until 1853; and while it lasted religion made some progress here, but slowly. The Rev. Richard Bulger, a native of Kilkenny, Ireland, having come to the American Mission, was ordained priest by Bishop Connolly of New York, in 1820. He was assistant at the cathedral in New York, and thence regularly attended Paterson, where he devoted himself to the Catholics gathered in that manufacturing town, and scattered about the upper part of the State. The church at Paterson is mentioned in the Almanac of 1822; it being then the only one in New Jersey. The pastor was exposed to inconvenience, insults, and hardship. One evening, for instance, a bigoted ruffian threw a large jagged stone into his lighted room, the shutters or window-blinds having been left unclosed, and he had a narrow escape from a hole in his head. On another occasion he was rudely turned out on to the muddy road with his Breviary and bundle from a country cart, the driver of which had given him a lift until he discovered that he was a priest. The account, however, says that it was the farmer’s wife who “declared that he should not remain in the wagon”; and the man afterwards applied to Father Bulger for instruction, and was received into the church, but we do not hear of the conversion of the scold—perhaps because (as an old poet says)
“Women’s feet run still astray,
If once to ill they know the way”!
—Habington.
About 1825, that part of New Jersey under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Philadelphia used to be visited occasionally by clergymen from beyond the Delaware, and stations were established at Pleasant Mills and Trenton, which continued to be served, but without resident pastors (we believe), until the diocese of Newark was erected. The city of Newark had a pastor about 1830 in the person of Rev. Gregory Pardow, who was in 1834 the only priest actually residing in New Jersey. After this period churches were erected not only in the principal city, Newark, but also in Jersey City, Perth Amboy, Belleville, Madison, New Brunswick, Elizabethtown, Macoupin, and other centres of population. The church at Macoupin was erected in 1841 by Father John Raffeiner, a native of the Tyrol, who came to this country in 1833, and used to visit the Germans scattered through New Jersey; and in 1842 a church in Newark for the German Catholics was erected by Father Balleis, a Benedictine monk. On the 30th of October, 1853, the Rt. Rev. J. R. Bayley, at the time a priest in New York, was consecrated first bishop of Newark, the diocese being coextensive with the State; and, on his taking possession of his see, found thirty-three churches and thirty clergymen. Since then the advance of the Catholic religion here has been rapid; and when Bishop Bayley was transferred to Baltimore, he left to his successor what is considered, we believe, one of the completest dioceses in the United States—a disciplined clergy, religious orders of both sexes, diocesan seminary, college for higher education, academy for young ladies, select and parochial schools, orphan asylums, hospitals, cemeteries, and other Christian institutions, in a flourishing condition. The progress of the church during these latter years has been before the eyes of all; and as we have intended to limit ourselves to the period anterior to the erection of New Jersey into a diocese, in making notes on Catholicity in the State, we now end them, if even a little abruptly.