Expanding The Mission: Catholic Mechanicville 1902-1952
EXPANDING THE MISSION: CATHOLIC MECHANICVILLE 1902-1952
Part II of III- By Dr. Paul Loatman – City Historian
July 30, 2002
The first half-century of Catholicism in Mechanicville had witnessed steady if not spectacular growth. An outcast group of desperately poor Irish immigrants had built a church largely through the efforts of their chief patron, John Short, in 1852. Over the course of the next fifty years, the second and third generations of Catholics established sodalities affiliated with the Church that supported the Faith while providing social outlets for Catholics who had been gaining increased acceptance from the larger community. Thus, it well may have been something of an exaggeration for his eulogist to later claim that Fr. Daniel J. O’Sullivan had arrived at what was “then a struggling country parish with a mission in Stillwater” when he opened his pastorate here in 1902. Yet, the changes that the new priest and his successors witnessed in the next half-century could not have been anticipated by any of the parish’s founders.
At the outset, Fr. O’Sullivan came face to face with two significant issues. Mechanicville’s population, which had quadrupled between 1892 and 1905, included an increasingly larger proportion of Catholics. But now, fewer of them were arriving from Ireland. Rather, they were emigrating here from southern Italy and Lithuania, most of them peasants whose devotional practices, religious experiences, and cultures were unlike those of their predecessors. Confronting the challenges presented by the changing face of Mechanicville's Catholic community would reshape the character of local Catholicism in the next half century.
Coming from a political system marked by persecution that had prompted them to wear their religion on their sleeves, and entering a society with a long tradition of questioning Catholic loyalties, immigrants from the Emerald Isle forged tight-knit parishes and a hierarchical system that emphasized their uniqueness while giving rise to the expectation that they would prevail against their enemies in the hereafter, if not now. Along with Polish-speaking immigrants, they shared a sense that religion and cultural identity were inextricably linked. However, this bond of uniqueness created a sense of exclusion toward other Catholics who had different experiences. Italian immigrants had been raised in an environment where Church and state were bound together. Indeed, the Church in Italy not only received financial support from the government; at times, it exploited the peasants as much as the corrupt government officials did, creating in their minds a sense of distrust toward all authority-civil and religious. Also, the extravagant festivities associated with Italian religious feasts were unheard of by the Irish, while Italians regarded the concepts of voluntary support of the Church and formal membership requirements as unfathomable. Given all of this, the Church hierarchy’s attitude that American Catholicism was a “one-size-fits all ” religion made conflict inevitable after waves of these immigrants began arriving here in the mid-1890s.
Born in County Cork in 1859 and emigrating with his parents to Massachusetts as a boy, Father O’Sullivan was shaped by the Irish immigrant experience in Lawrence before he entered the seminary on July 3,1882, at the age of 23. Among a diverse group of ethnic groups, the Irish had come to dominate Catholic Lawrence, culturally and religiously, in a manner that could later be described as “triumphalist.” Possessing both optimism and ambition when he came here, Fr. O’Sullivan saw his mission in Mechanicville as one requiring him to raise the visible symbols of Catholicism to a position concomitant with its adherents’ social status in the community. Nine years into his pastorate and twenty-five years into his priesthood, he pointed out that although “old-timers who saw the church on William St. [built] in 1852 … wondered why a building so vast should be erected for the few Catholics of the place …, today that edifice is inadequate to the comfortable accommodation of the parishioners on Sunday.” In the beginning, one Mass had been celebrated each Sunday; by 1911, there were four Sunday Masses. In 1852, the parish numbered in the hundreds; by 1911, the thousands who belonged required a much larger church.
Overseeing a four-year building project, Fr. O’Sullivan raised hundreds of thousands of dollars that enabled his parish to build a magnificent, cathedral-like edifice that overshadowed the structure it replaced, both in terms of size and appearance. One glimpse at the new St. Paul’s church that was consecrated in 1916, and any traveler passing through Mechanicville would know immediately which congregation had come to dominate the religious life of the community. Yet, Fr. O’Sullivan and his fellow-priests also were beginning to learn that a vibrant parish was built with more than bricks and mortar.
At its inception, the chief distinction among St. Paul’s members may have been whether or not they had come from Ireland two years or two decades ago. Half a century later, though all parishioners were equally familiar with the Latin Mass, Italian and Polish-speaking immigrants had little in common with their Irish co-religionists. Although Polish-speaking priests were recruited occasionally to conduct religious missions, none of them had ever been assigned to the parish on a permanent basis. However, as early as 1905, a weekly ethnic Mass was scheduled for the hundreds of Italians living here, many of them “birds of passage” who migrated annually between Naples and Mechanicville. The following year, the Augustinians began regularly assigning an Italian priest to the parish. The first of these missionaries, newly-ordained Fr. Serafino Aurigemma, hailed from Monteforte Iripina, a small paese southeast of Naples. The overwhelming majority of local Italians also emigrated from small agricultural villages in the region around Naples. Following two years of service, Fr. Aurigemma was recalled to Philadelphia, replaced by a succession of fellow missionaries until 1911when he was re-assigned here for a second three-year term.
Between 1914 and 1918, local Italian immigrants were ministered to by Fr. Daniel Scalabrella, described by his successor as “a zealous and saintly priest.” Despite the efforts of these missionaries, only about ninety souls attended the weekly Italian Masses and “the collections were nil.” Fr.Scalabrella “realized that little or nothing could be accomplished among our people, as long as they did not have a place to worship of their own,” Fr.Aurigemma later recalled. Indeed, as early as September, 1912, he himself had sought permission from the Village Board to show Sunday movies on behalf of the “Italian Church Fund.” However, his request was denied, not a surprising outcome given the strictness with which “Sunday observance” laws were enforced at that time. Despite this setback, Fr.Scalabrella later succeeded in purchasing “the Houlihan estate” at the corner of Viall and Saratoga Avenues in anticipation of erecting a new church there. This move was endorsed by the Bishop in 1915 when the missionary presented the findings of a special census he conducted that there were now thousands of Italian immigrants living in Mechanicville. Given the fact that this group felt unwelcome in the “Irish church” where they were castigated from the pulpit often as “the nickel gang” (an allusion to the meagerness of their contributions to weekly collections), creating a separate ethnic parish seemed the only sensible way to meet the religious needs of the burgeoning immigrant enclave. But, before realizing his plans, Fr. Scalabrella died in the “Spanish flu” pandemic in 1918, one of nearly 100 local victims of the deadliest epidemic in American history.
Following Fr. Aurigemma’s delivery of the funeral eulogy for his fellow Augustinian, the Bishop recruited him to return to Mechanicville for a third time. The young priest accepted the call, but not before stipulating that he be freed from the burden of building a new church. Rather, he proposed reopening the now-abandoned original structure to serve as the base of an Italian ethnic parish. In theory, American Catholic parishes were geographically defined; Catholics living within prescibed areas formed unitary congregations, regardless of their diverse ethnic or social backgrounds. But, by the beginning of the 20th century, the American hierarchy had been forced to deviate from this policy by necessity, a recognition that Catholic immigrants from southern and eastern Europe might defect from their religion if they were not ministered to by clergy of their own background. Thus, parishes whose membership was limited to specific immigrant groups were created within the boundaries of conventional parishes. Although it had been abandoned when St. Paul’s opened its new house of worship in 1916, Mechanicville’s Italian Catholics had used the old structure informally while awaiting the building of their own church. Now, both the Bishop and the Augustinian Provincial accepted Fr. Aurigemma’s proposal, and he began his third term of service in Mechanicville in 1919, this time as pastor of the Church of the Assumption. His would serve continuously in that role until 1961, when, upon retirement, he was named Pastor Emeritus, a title he held until passing away in 1971.
Fr. Aurigemma pursued two inter-related goals at the inauguration of his pastorate: scrapping plans to build a new church while persuading parishoners that buying the old church was a wise decision; and, convincing the pastor of St. Paul’s to sell this abandoned property at a reasonable price. Although reticent to speak about it when I interviewed him thirty-five years ago, Fr.Aurigemma did not deny the story that the greeting party which met him upon his arrival in Troy to begin his pastorate left him standing at the train station once he had confirmed his decision to abandon the new building project. As he wrote in 1940, “it was hard work to convince the people of the temerity of building.” This issue, as well as disagreements regarding the extent of laic control that would be permitted in the new parish, led some local immigrants to organize the Italian Mission Church in 1923, an evangelical sect that continues to maintain congregations in nearby Riverside and Schenectady.
In 1924, Fr. Aurigemma ran afoul of the Church hierarchy when he sought an exemption from a diocesan-wide edict prohibiting Italian parish participation in street festivals such as the one the local Fratellenza had initiated in 1903. As he explained in a letter to the pastor of St. Paul’s the following year, Bishop Edmund Gibbons wrote that “the reasons why I prohibit these processions are well known.” He went on to claim that they raised the specter of “scandal and shock, especially to the non-Catholics who witnessed the extravagant performances of the people who took part in them.” Fr. Aurigemma complied with the edict (although the Fratellenza continued to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption without direct parish participation), but he did not take the Bishop’s order lying down. Giving as good as he got, he informed his superior that his counterpart at St. Paul’s had been violating the spirit of the pronouncement by conducting processions of his own. Ever the diplomat, the Bishop reluctantly requested that Fr. McErlain forego St. Paul’s annual May Day Procession “so as not to give anybody a chance to say that I was discriminating in favor of the Irish…. No doubt you realize the difficulties I have with the Italians and will be willing to accede to my request.” The pastor of St. Paul’s did so comply, but not before expressing his outrage that anyone could possibly equate his “children’s procession” with “a vulgar street festival.” He took further umbrage with Fr. Aurigemma’s request to exempt the Church of the Assumption from the Bishop’s ruling, suggesting that “ a hint from the Bishop to ANY pastor should be more than sufficient.” It is interesting to note that although St. Paul’s was a conventional geographic parish without ecclesiastically-approved ethnic identity, the Bishop regarded it as an Irish congregation.
Disputes of a similar nature arose in another quarter of St. Paul’s parish. Despite what Harvard church historian, Sydney Ahlstrom, has described as their “fervency of devotion to the Catholic Church,” the Bishop in 1930 was forced to deal with complaints from local Polish-speaking Lithuanian parishoners. A letter addressed to the Diocesan Office on behalf of this group contended that the pastor of St. Paul’s had prevented “Catholic minorities” from being buried in the parish cemetery with their Irish co-religionists. The complainant went on to note that Polish-speaking priests occasionally assigned here were prohibited from administering the sacraments in their native tongue. The rapid growth of the Lithuanian community in the early 20th century had enabled it to establish an ethnic-based St. John’s Society prior to World War I. However, the fact that it never organized its own parish may have had as much to do with its constituency’s close relationship with Irish foremen with whom the majority of them worked in the paper mill as it did with the decline of their numbers after 1915. Unlike the Italian population, the Polish-speaking group dwindled in size following the passage of racist anti-immigration laws by Congress in the 1920s. Yet, testimony to the group’s long-term cohesiveness is demonstrated by the fact that over 70 percent of children enrolled in School 4 in its Riverside enclave were Slavic-surnamed in 1958. By comparison, 81 percent of the students simultaneously attending School 3 on Saratoga Avenue were Italian-surnamed, facts disclosed by examining the class registers for the final year that these neighborhood elementary schools operated.
In the meantime, evidence of St. Paul’s continued growth was signified by the opening of a Parish Hall on St. Patrick’s Day, 1926, and the inauguration of the new parochial school the following September.
By this time, the parish had acquired all of the trappings of a “typical” Irish Catholic parish: the four Masses celebrated each Sunday were followed by Benediction at 4 p.m., an hour after weekly Baptisms had been administered. Two daily weekday Masses were offered, and Confessions were heard for four hours each Saturday. Five affiliated sodalities- the K. of C., Catholic Daughters, Ladies Catholic Benevolent Aid Society, the Holy Name, and the Ladies Auxiliary of the Ancient Order of Hibernians-each met twice a month on different days, while the Sacred Heart Society met once a week. Affluent members were invited to join the pastor to go “On to Chicago” in June, 1926, to attend the American Eucharistic Congress. Obviously, for the devout Catholic, life easily could have revolved around the Church and its associated para-religious organizations. Given the fact that the pastor, Fr. Alfred Valiquette, had assured Bishop Gibbons the “our city [government] is made up of Catholic men from the Mayor down,” St. Paul’s parishoners could assume that life centered around their Church and religion, regardless of what may have been going on in the larger realm of American society. Thus, no one questioned the appropriateness of the City Council’s passage of a resolution on May 23, 1921, instructing President Warren Harding to oppose “the present war in Ireland, [being] waged to repress representative government with every circumstance of barbarism,” while urging him to diplomatically recognize the newly-created Republic of Ireland. On a more mundane level, the traffic signals outside of St. Paul’s on Main and William Streets were inverted so that the Irish green was on top.
The collective self-image of a parish is hard to discern, but an interesting note printed in “Our Parish Calendar” for April 1926, quoting an “eminent French Protestant” sociologist provides some insight into the Pastor’s psyche, if not that of the parish at large. Keeping in mind that the sensational Scopes “monkey trial” challenging the right to teach evolution in schools had just concluded, and that the Ku Klux Klan was then reaching the height of its popularity in the North as the leading opponent of Catholic immigration to the United States, the bulletin approvingly cited Andre Siegfried’s observation that American Protestantism was “national, conservative, and aristocratic while Catholicism … in general is liberal, social, and progressive.” Lest we believe that the pastor or his flock were presumptuous of their own virtue, however, the eulogy that Fr. McErlain had delivered for former pastor, Fr. D.J. O’Sullivan, earlier that year captured another aspect typical of Irish-Catholic religious sensibility at that time. Noting that this immigrant priest “had a bond [with his parishioners] stronger than that of respect ordinarily shown to a pastor,” he urged his listeners to pray for the repose of his soul because “even angels are imperfect in the sight of God,” and parishioners might not realize that “ a priest raising his hand so often in benediction may in some moment commit some imperfection in the sight of God.” Imperfect or not, the example set by these priests left a strong impression on their charges if we are to judge by the significant number of vocations that the parish produced during these years.
While the Great Depression hit Mechanicville as severely if not more so than other milltowns, the roster of St. Paul’s contributors for 1935-36 listed 1,540 donors who had provided financial support. While one person’s mite amounted to a mere 5 cents, many contributors gave an average of 50 cents a week, no small amount considering that those who had jobs (almost one-third of the workforce was laid off) were fortunate to earn even a few dollars a day. For much of the Depression era, all of the city’s banks were closed, many residents having lost their life savings when these financial institutions had failed.
World War II and its aftermath brought better times financially, and although the parish did not fulfill Fr. O’Sullivan’s 1911 prediction that the new church on North Main St. being built that year “would call for greater enlargement” in the future, the parish did rededicate a new altar on May 23, 1947, a sign of
its members’ continuing commitment to demonstrate their pride in the development of their religious community. It was during this period, also, that St. Paul’s initiated an extensive program of CYO activities to meet the needs of young people who were entering the work force at later ages than they had in the 1920s and 1930s. There was a concern that their extra free time should be filled constructively. The CYO activities, encompassing both social and athletic events under the leadership of Fr. Ernest Autch, became a model program, the envy of many other Catholic parishes throughout the Diocese.
Meanwhile, the Church of the Assumption continued its missionary journey of ministering to the needs of the local Italian community. Its lack of financial resources compared to those of its larger sister parish reflected the relative socio-economic positions of the two groups. Thus, Fr. Aurigemma proudly reported to his congregation in 1924 that they had reduced the parish’s debt to $5,000, having offset the expense of purchasing the old church and rectory from St. Paul’s by selling the old “Houlihan estate” that Fr. Scalabrella had bought for $6,500 as the site of a new church. The pastor went on to assure his parishoners that “you have patronized God’s cause … [and] his religion is better practiced by our people.” However, the relatively flush times of the “Roaring Twenties” did not persist long enough to enable the parish to clear itself of debt.
The Assumption congregation consisted largely of factory hands and day laborers, men and women particularly vulnerable to the sudden collapse of the American economy at the end of the 1920s. Even before the Crash of 1929, many of them had been hard hit by the failure of the Banco DellaVigna, the local immigrant financial institution shut down by the State Banking Commissioner in 1924. The Banco served as a currency exchange; provided a depository for immigrants who were wary of American banks; and sold through-passage to the numerous Italians who commuted between Mechanicville and Naples to visit their families each year.
When the Banking Commissioner liquidated the institution’s assets in 1927, depositors were able to cushion their losses by recouping 57 percent of their holdings. However, economic matters took a sharp turn for the worse following the Crash of the Stock Market. In 1929, both of Mechanicville’s more conventional banks (the First National and Manufacturer’s National), failed and passed into receivership. A prolonged period of financial distress plagued the entire community, blue-collar workers dependent on the hourly wages they earned at the paper mill and railroad yards were being especially affected. Local employers drastically reduced the size of their labor forces during the 1930s, with the railroad industry never recovering from the shock of the Depression. Thus, Fr. Aurigemma’s explanation that his parish’s failure to support the diocesan fund-raising campaign in 1933 was “ not due to the lack of religion on the part of the people” was hardly a rationalization. Explaining that he had not taken a salary in a number of years, he went on to tell the Diocesan Chancellor: “one-half of the people here are out of work and depend on the city. The rest work 2 or 3 days for $5-6 per week. And owing to the failure of the two banks, the financial condition of this parish suffered quite a bit.” Gradually, the Depression loosened its strangle-hold on the economy, but it would be nearly a decade before most laborers were able to secure full-time employment once again. In the interim, many families faced the threat of mortgage foreclosure, and ended up losing their homes as well as their jobs.
Although they may have possessed limited financial resources throughout their early history, these parishoners did share a rich musical tradition. As early as October 25, 1917, a group calling itself “The Young Men’s Italian Club of the Assumption Parish” (even though the parish did not exist yet) held a “concert of classical character.” While drawing musical talent from other communities, a strong representation came from local ranks, among them: Dr. Domenico Mauro-tenor; Elena Aurigemma- pianist; Ferdinando Amodeo-violinist; and Professors Pietro Federico and Lawrence Izzo. The parish’s dedication ceremony on November 30, 1919 was highlighted by a special choir performance of sacred music. No one thought it unusual that such a group would be “concert-ready” even before the parish it represented had come into existence. Fr. Aurigemma matter-of-factly thanked the choir for its usual stellar Good Friday performance of Rossini’s “Stabat Mater,” a piece that presents formidable challenges to the most professional of choral groups, while sharing his reflections on two decades of parish history in a pamphlet he wrote for the occasion.
Parishoners displayed their musical talents in other ways as well. For instance, during the parish’s four-day “Grand Bazaar” held in May, 1940, a clarinet and sax quartet of Ralph Marra, Rolando Gaetano, Angelo Friello, and Mario Gaetano, as well as a trumpet ensemble of Michael Zurlo, Michael Martone, Michael Cappetta and Joseph DiBello regaled listeners with their renditions of the latest popular tunes. Looking for a trombone and baritone duet? Eugene Siciliano and Anthony Lembo filled the bill. Clarinet duets were performed by cousins Carmie and Carmie DeCrescente who formed a quartet two nights later when joined by trumpeters Martone and Zurlo. Other musicians on display included Sonny Cuilla, Lena Enzogna, and Vince D’Amico, while song medleys were performed by Joe Panza and Anna Fargnoli. Assumption may not have been the richest parish around, but no one could accuse it of not being “in the swing.”
The same year that St. Paul’s replaced its original altar with more modern marble and oak pieces still in use today, Fr. Aurigemma published a list of donors to Assumption’s monthly collections for 1947. While significantly shorter than that of its sister parish, the list revealed that enough progress had been made to insure the parish’s economic survival. Five years later, with Mechanicville’s original Catholic Church nearing a century of service, the structure was renovated in time for a special Centennial Mass offered on October 25, 1952. The Franciscan Prior from Graymoor Seminary in Garrison, New York, joined Fr. Aurigemma in celebrating the event. Interestingly enough, neither clergy from St. Paul’s nor those from the Augustinian Provincial Headquarters in Villanova, Pennsylvania, participated in the ceremonies. For undetermined reasons, the parish that had brought Catholicism to life in Mechanicville took no note of this historic event.
Having weathered the crises of two world wars, immigrant restriction, and the Depression, Mechanicville’s Catholic community found itself in a much stronger position now than it had been at its founding. By the early 1950s, the extensive Westvaco paper mill operations, the B&M and D&H railroads, and the textile industry once again were providing numerous job opportunities. More and more local graduates of both St. Paul’s School and the local public high school also were pursuing professional degrees at local colleges. Theologically, the Church proclaimed the Feast of the Assumption an official holy day of obligation in 1950, a step that added to the sense of pride Italian Catholics here took in their parish’s religious tradition. In a wider sense then, there was an aura about Catholicism that it was, like St. Peter, firm as a rock and changeless for all of the ages. Whatever the future might hold, Mechanicville’s Catholics could be sure that there would be one constant in their lives that would be free from the stresses and influences of the larger society- their bedrock religion. Or, so they believed.