The Dugan, Harkins, and Rogers Family Founders of Holy Trinity Church, Zanesville by Donald M
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Vol. XXXII, No. 11 Nov. 5: St. Elizabeth November, 2007 The Dugan, Harkins, and Rogers Family Founders of Holy Trinity Church, Zanesville by Donald M. Schlegel Mrs. Elizabeth or Betty Dugan, her husband the present Connelsville, and on to the mouth of Thomas, and their family came to Amercia from Jacob’s Creek. The majority settled in “the County Donegal, Ireland, in 1792. They were Neck,” that part of northwestern Fayette County among the vanguard of settlers in the Irish lying between the Youghiogheny River and Catholic community at Buffalo Creek in what is Jacob’s Creek. Some farmed there while others now Butler and Armstrong counties, found employment four miles up Jacob’s Creek Pennsylvania. After some twenty-five years in at the Alliance blast furnace, the first of its nature Pennsylvania, many of the Dugans moved west west of the Alleghenies, which had been to Zanesville, Ohio, where, together with Father established in 1790.1 Nicholas Young, they founded the Catholic In 1796, after Mad Anthony Wayne’s defeat parish. From Zanesville, within a few decades of the Indians at Fallen Timbers in the Ohio they spread across the width of the American territory (1794) and the signing of the Greenville continent, most of them carrying with them the Treaty (1795), the majority of the Donegal Irish Faith that had been brought to Ireland by St. moved on. Their route was north past Greensburg Patrick and established in Ohio by the saintly to the Allegheny River at Freeport. Crossing the Father Fenwick. river at that point they traveled north, up Buffalo Creek. The first to arrive there were Charles Buffalo Creek Settlement Duffy, Thomas Dugan, John Dugan, John Forker, John Gillespie, Moses Hanlon, and P. McElroy. The core group of settlers of Buffalo Creek, As more Irish pioneers arrived the settlement all natives of County Donegal, left Ireland from spread several miles to the north, west, and south. the port of Derry on June 4, 1792 and arrived in The settlement was also called Donegal, from the New Castle, Delaware on September 9. Within township name in Butler County, and Sugar two years they proceeded to Indian Creek Creek, from the name of the adjoining township Settlement in Fayette County. The route most in Armstrong County. of them took to the western frontier followed The only mode of travel to those remote parts part of the road opened by General Braddock in at the time was by foot or pack-horse. The horses his expedition against Fort Duquesne in 1755. were used to bring in supplies such as salt and It crossed the mountains from Cumberland, iron from more civilized parts of the country and Maryland to the Yohioghenny River and went to convey the settlers’ products to market. These down that river to Mr. Stewart’s Crossing, near products, which brought in their meagre cash, 177 included beeswax, tallow, flax, and bags that November of 1805 Connel Rogers, son-in-law were manufactured by the women of the of the Dugans, wrote a letter in which he settlement.2 mentioned that the congregation had bought the A site in Donegal Township, Butler County, site but had not yet prepared it for a priest.4 later called Maloney’s Corners3 but in those early In 1805 Rev. Laurence S. Phelan took up days owned by the Dugans, was the “rallying residence in the heart of the community. place” for the Irish settlers. Above the Overjoyed at having a priest in their midst, the intersection the community’s first cemetery was heads of the families met to consider how to build established and there also they built a small log a house and a church on the new site. The district cabin with a crude altar to serve as a church when was split into four quarters and one man was sent a priest might visit. No priest visited until 1801, to collect funds in each quarter. Connel Rogers when a Father Lanigan stayed for a short while. was assigned to canvas the northwestern quarter, The next to bring the sacraments was the German or Donegal Township. At the same time, “one priest Father Heilbron, who came in 1803 and of the men, a tailor by profession, was planning baptized thirty-eight persons. Because they could the vestments.”5 Perhaps this also was Connel not understand this German priest very well, the Rogers, who was a tailor. Each of the four settlers sent a petition to Bishop Carroll in districts was responsible for funds or materials Baltimore, asking for a priest whose language to construct one wall of the church. Logs were they could understand. Leading the list of cut locally and boards for the more finished parts signatories were Thomas Dugan, John Gillespie, were hauled from a sawmill in Butler. In the Neal Dugan, and Michael Dugan. Also signing spring of 1806 the church, measuring some 22 were John Dugan and Robert Harkins. by 35 feet, was under roof and was dedicated to About 1804 a 200 acre farm was purchased God under the invocation of St. Patrick, Apostle for a church, using money advanced by one of of Ireland. However, Mass was not offered there the settlers. It is on one of the highest points in more often than once in one or two months, when Armstrong County, in Sugar Creek Township, the priest was present. Father Phelan left in 1810 some twelve miles northwest of Kittanning and and the community was dependent upon visiting 1/2 mile east of the Butler County line. In priests until 1821. St. Patrick’s at Sugar Creek, repaired in 1926. 178 O’Dugan in Tír Chonaill There was no well-known Dugan family in the early 17th century who had some social County Donegal or Tír Chonaill, as it was known standing. In the spring of 1601 the government in to the Irish. The closest notable family of a similar Dublin issued a pardon to Niall Garbh O’Donnell, name lived at Kilronan, Co. Roscommon. They a member of the local noble family who had gone were one of the great literary families of Ireland, over to the government side against O’Neill and professors of poetry, history, and music. Another O’Donnell. The latter were fighting against the family of Dugans lived in County Cork. foreign, Protestant government for the Catholic But where did the Donegal O’Dugans come faith and their own culture and independence. from? One Ulster family of the name had lived Among Niall Garbh O’Donnell’s followers were centuries before in Magh Itha, the plain in County Shane Croine, Hugh, Cormack, and Owen (son of Donegal west of the River Foyle. This family, William) O Dowgan. In 1610, after Earl Rory which was related to the later O’Neills, was driven O’Donnell had fled from Ireland and Tír Chonaill east across the Foyle in the 12th century. There was confiscated by the government to be planted is no indication of how some of them may have with Scots and Englishmen, Murtaghe O Dowgan returned to Tír Chonaill. Another O’Dugan family was slated to receive four balliboes or 64 acres of is said to have lived from time immemorial on arable land. He was a native of the county and no Tory Island, off the northwest coast of Tír doubt head of the small sept or tribe at that time. Chonaill. Dr. John O’Donovan, 19th century Natives were allotted land in Kilmacrenan Barony scholar, in his edition of the Annals of the Four and at the rising of 1641 it was Hugh Doragh Masters noted that he was given a very complete O’Dougan, Irish Papist, no doubt Murtaghe’s heir, version of the ancient story of Balor of the Evil from whom lands in the parish of Clandhurka, Eye by Shane O’Dugan, whose ancestor is said Barony of Kilmacrenan, were taken. The Dugans to have been living in Tory in the time of St. were not numerous enough in 1659 to be Columbkille, the 6th century. mentioned in the “census” of that year in County There were a few Dugans in Tír Chonaill by Donegal. “These pioneers were very primitive in their the peace and perhaps someone’s head, a song manners, as countless ancedotes related of them of commemoration immediately sprang from the incontestably prove. They delighted in polemics, bard’s head. “But with simplicity of manners and if the priest found it necessary to refute some they had a purity of morals and firmness of faith arguments of a minister of the sects, he need not which are the glory of the Irish people in whatever be surprised to hear some elderly member of his part of the world they are found; and an insult flock enthusiastically exclaim, ‘Well said, your offered to religion by a sectarian, or a scandal reverence,’ or some such token of approval. If brought upon it by one of their own communion, he denounced intemperance or some other was the only unpardonable sin in their disorder in his flock, a patriarchal figure might decalogue.”6 be seen rising to point a significant finger at some one, with, ‘That’s for you; you were drunk last Mrs. Dugan week. Listen to what his reverence is saying’”... Thomas and Elizabeth or Betty Dugan The settlement had a “bard” who celebrated every probably were natives of Templecrone Parish on memorable event in verse. If the schoolmaster Donegal’s west coast. Their son-in-law was from vanquished some unfledged sectarian preacher, Rutland Island in that parish.