Holy Ghost College Bulletin
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The Earliest Catholic Missions in Pittshiirrjh 287 least an annual visit. This he promised to do for them as soon as it would be possible. The first priest, however, who actually came to Pittsburgh about this time, namely in 1786, was the Rev. Peter Huet de la Vilmiere, who walked all the way from Phila- delphia to Pittsburgh. No definite account is given of his visit. But it is known that from here he descended the Ohio River to the Illinois countn,^ Then came a Father Paul, a Carmelite, of whom we have no further knowledge. After him came the Franciscan Friar (priest). Father Charles Whalen, who passed here on his v;ay to the Catholics of Kentucky, to whom he was sent, in 1787, by the Very Rev. Dr. Carroll. But the most noted visitor, at this period, was the Rev. Benedict Joseph Flaget, aftenvards, in 1808, first Bishop of Bardstown (nov/ Louisville), Kentucky. He had set out from Baltimore in a wagon, in Ma}^ 1792, and remained in Pitts- burgh for a period of six months. During this time he stayed, and said Mass every morning, in the house of a French Huguenot, married to an American Protestant lady. In Novem-ber of the same year he left Pittsburgh, in a flat boat, for Louisville. In the autumn of the following year, 1793, arrived, on foot, also from Baltimore, the Rev. Stephen Badin, who has the dis- tinction of being the first priest ordained in the United States. He and a companion. Father Barrieres, left Pittsburgh, November 3, ' 93, on a flat boat, also for Louisville. In 1796, came Rev. Father Foumier, who stayed here 14 weeks, while at the same time, but for a shorter period, there were here two other priests, Fathers Bodkin and Maguire (but not the one vs-hom we are going to speak farther on). At this time, according to the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times of January 9, 1796, there vras in the town a population of 1395 souls. These brief records will suffice for the first period of half a century, during which we find that, in proportion to its size, popu- lation and location, Pittsburgh was pretty well favored with the presence, and occasional visits of some member or other of the Catholic clergy,—and the fact is distinctly established that it was a Catholic clergyman that conducted the first private or public Christian worship within these precincts. Before thus bringing the 18th Century to a close we may add that we have the record of a Rev. Father John Thayer, a convert from the Congregational church in Boston, who came through Pittsburgh in 1799, on his way to Kentucky, and who, at Browns- ville, stayed at the house of a good Catholic gentleman, Mr. Neal Gillespie, Sr., who w^as the grandfather of the famous James G. Blaine, candidate for President against Cleveland in 1884..