The following Sunday the general’s old comrades in arms and members of the Loyal Legion, Grand Army of the Republic and delegations from other organizations visited the residence and held memorial exercises. About one hundred members of the parish Holy Name Society, of which the deceased was a member, accompanied by the rector, Rev. M. J. Crane, and the spiritual director, Rev. Thomas J. Hanney, recited the Office for the Dead at the house, as did also the Alumni Sodality, which had forty members present.
The funeral took place Monday morning, from the late residence of the deceased, 4202 Chester Avenue. Solemn Requiem Mass was sung in St. Francis de Sales’ Church by the rector, Rev. M. J. Crane. Rev. Joseph A. Whittaker was deacon; Rev. Thomas J. Hanney, sub-deacon, and Rev. Alfred C. Welsh, of Kennett Square, master of ceremonies.
The absolution of the body was performed by Right Rev. Monsignor William Kieran, D. D., rector of St. Patrick’s. In compliance with the wishes of the deceased, there was no sermon, but Monsignor Kieran, who read the funeral service in English as well as in Latin, made a brief address, alluding to the virtues and patriotism of this great man. The interment was in Old Cathedral Cemetery.
One of the leading journals of Philadelphia states editorially:
“After seventy-three years of life’s battling, General St. Clair A. Mulholland lies in a soldier’s grave. ‘After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.’ Those who live well and die well surely sleep well. And truly may it be said of the great and gallant Irishman who has laid down his sword and gone to rest in his soldier’s cloak that he did all a soldier could to live well and die well for the country of his adoption, since he could not offer it for that of his nativity. It was not his lot to fall on the field of his fame, but to rise from the blood-soaked soil more than once to take up the task of the soldier-saint, Louis of France, and reveal the tender heart of the woman beating beneath the cuirass of the soldier. To visit the prisons and to bear the message of solace to the despairing victims of a cruel fate was the task which he marked out for himself, and carried out to the very last healthful day of his official career. Many a stout and steadfast heart has ‘the black North,’ as his native Ulster is erroneously called, brought to the defense and glorification of the American Union, but none surpassing in beautiful qualities that of the quiet and unassuming soldier who now lies in a friendly grave in the land he served, but far from the hills of his native Ulster, the land of the O’Neills and the O’Donnells, and all the representatives of the modern chivalry of ‘the Red Branch’—saints like Columbkille and martyrs like Archbishop Plunkett.
“It is a unique glory that the flag of the American Union owns. She has lured the bravest and the most unselfish from all lands to defend her cause, and she lays the proud tribute of her gratitude and her sorrow on their biers with a hand that knows no discrimination as to nationality. The soldier from Antrim who gave his strong right arm, as well as his unselfish heart, to her service was worthy of her, and she of him. And so may it ever be as between America and Ireland. ‘Quis separabit?’”
MGR. B. C. LENEHAN.
BY THE SECRETARY GENERAL.
Mgr. B. C. Lenehan, who died September 21 last at Fort Dodge, Ia., was born February 3, 1843, in New York City, and was baptized in the old New York cathedral. He settled in Dubuque with his parents when ten years of age, and received his education in the Dubuque schools and took his classical course at Vinentra college, Cape Girardeau, Mo., completing his work at Milwaukee, Wis. He was ordained December 8, 1867, by Archbishop Hennessey. He was stationed at Mount McGregor, Iowa, for some time before going to Sioux City.
Nowhere was the deceased clergyman better known or more loved than in Sioux City, where he spent fourteen of the most active years of his ministry.