Saturday, October 31, 2009

The Irish Catholic Parish, 10th Ward




As we learned about in class this week, Baltimore offered a spiritual home to many that were not able to worship freely in their native land. People of various faiths and denominations found fellowship here, and worshipped at churches that were cultural and social centers as well. An early example is St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, at Valley and Eager Streets in East Baltimore.
According to the web site for the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore (http://www.archbalt.org/), St. John's was established in 1853, which is right around the time that the Irish Matriarch arrived. It was located close to Harford Road, and was accessible to those Irish that settled both in the city and surrounding farmlands. From what I understand at the present, it would appear that the church was about 3 miles from the Burgan home. The building still stands today, but is no longer used. The parish itself closed in 1966, but its records are still available at St. Mary's Seminary, on Roland Avenue.
An organization exists to the present that remembers the Irish parish, and the people it served. It is called St. John's Old Tenth Ward, Inc. Their literature explains that the parish, in its infancy, was too poor to pay someone to build a church for them, so they built it themselves. From humble beginnings, the parish developed into a congregation with over 10,000 members.
I visited the Seminary's research library a while back, and spent some time going through the sacramental records that they maintain on microfilm. I was amazed to find that Agnes and her husband, John J., baptized at least one of their children there. John J. Jr. was born on January 25, 1870, and appears in their baptismal records with his parents and godparents.



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