Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/426

 OALLITZIN

368

OALLITZIN

First Holy Communion (1786) occurred on 28 August, the feast of St. Augustine, assumed at confirmation that name, and thereafter wrote his name Demetrius Augustine. After finishing his education he was ap- pointed aide-de-camp to the Austrian General von Lillien, but as there was no opportunity for him to continue a military career his parents resolved that he should spend two years in travelling through America,

the West Indies, and other foreign lands. Provided with letters of introduction to Bishop Carroll of Balti- more, and accompanied by his tutor, Father Brosius, afterwards a prominent missionary in the United States, lie embarked at Rotterdam, Holland, 18 Au- gust, 1792, and landed in Baltimore, 28 October. To avoid the inconvenience and expense of travelling as a Russian prince, he assimied the name of Schmet, or Smith, and for many years was known in the United States as Augustine Smith. Soon after arriving at Baltimore, he was deeply impressed with the needs of the Church in America. He resolved to devote his fortune and life to the salvation of souls in the country of his adoption. Despite the objections of his rela- tives and friends in Europe, he, with the approval of Bishop Carroll, entered St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, as one of its first students, it having been founded the previous year (1791) by Sulpician priests, refugees from France. On 18 March, 1795, he was ordained priest, being the first to receive in the limits of the original thirteen of the United States all the orders from tonsure to priesthood.

In 1788 Captain Michael McGuire, an officer in the Revolutionary army, purchased about 1200 acres of land near the summit of the AUeghenies, in what is now Cambria County, Pennsylvania, and was the first white man to establish a residence within the limits of that county. He brought his family from Maryland and built his log-cabin in the valley below the site of the present town of Loretto, in the midst of a dense forest which covered all that portion of the State. His nearest neighbours were fully twenty miles distant. Soon relatives and friends followed from Maryland, established themselves in the vicinity, and formed what came to be known far and wide as McGuire's Settlement, later called Clearfield, the lands lying on the headwaters of Clearfield t'reek. Some years after his arrival Father fiallitzin named it Loretto, aft«r the city of Loreto in Italy ; but it was not until 1816 that he laid out the town and caused the plan of lots to be recorded in the county archives. Captain McGuire died in 179:{, Itequeathing to Bishop ('arroU four hundred acres of his land in trust for the benefit of the resident clergy who, he hoped, would be ap- pointed to provide for the spiritual wants of his grow-

ing colony. He was the first to be buried in the por- tion of this land set aside for a cemetery, which Father Brosius consecrated on one of his early visits to the settlement.

Father Gallitzin first exercised his ministry at Bal- timore and in the scattered missions of southern Pennsylvania and northern Maryland and Virginia. In 1796, while stationed at Conewago, Pennsylvania, he received a sick-call to attend a Mrs. John Burgoon, a Protestant, who lived at 'McGuire's Settlement, about one hundred and fifty miles distant, and who ardently desired to become a Catholic before her death. Father Gallitzin immediately started on the long journey, instructed Mrs. Burgoon, and received her into the Church. During this visit to the AUe- ghenies he conceived the idea of forming there a Catholic settlement. In preparation therefor, he invested his means (eonsideral)le at that time) in the purchase of land adjoining the four himdred acres donated to the Church, and at the urgent request of the little mountain colony obtained from Bishop Carroll permission to fix his permanent residence there with jiu'isdiction extending over a territory with a radius of over one hundred miles. In the summer of 1799 he commenced his career as pioneer priest of the AUeghenies. His first care was to erect a church and house of logs, hewn from the immense pine trees of the surrounding forest. In a letter to Bishop Carroll, dated 9 February, 1800, he writes: "Our church, which was only begun in harvest, got finished fit for service the night before Christmas. It is about 44 feet long by 25, built of white pine logs with a very good shingle roof. I kept service in it at Christmas for the first time. There is also a house built for me, 16 feet by 14, besides a little kitchen and a stable." While the church and house were being constructed, he said Mass for the few Catholics of the settlement in the log- house, erected two years previously by Luke McGuire, the elder son of the captain. That house is still standing (1909) and serves as a residence for the descendants, in direct male line, of the founder of McGuire's Settlement. To accommodate the in- creasing influx of Catholic colonists. Father Gallitzin in 1808 enlarged the log church to almost double its former capacity, and as the population continued to increase, he took down the log building in 1817, and on the same site erected a frame church, forty by thirty feet, which served as the parish church until 1853.

OlAi'EL AND Home of Father (Gallitzin Loretto, Pennsylvania

Father Heyden, one of Father Gallitzin's biogra- phers, writes (1869): "What now constitutes the dio- ceses of Pittsburg, Erie, and a large part of the Harris- burg new episcopal see, was then the missionary field of a single priest. Rev. Prince Gallitzin. If we except the station at Youngstown, Westmoreland County, where the Rev. Mr. Browers had settled a few years before, there was not, from ('(incwagu in Adams ('ounty to Lake Erie — from the Susquehatuia to the Potomac — a solitary priest, church, or religious estab-