Atlanta Catholic Centennial

To obtain a suitable lot on which to build and to erect a small wooden frame church from roughly sawed and roughly planed lumber by the Catholics of Atlanta in 1847 in 1848 required more sacrifices and more effort than would be required to build a handsome stone church today. The Catholic citizens of those early days possessed a strong faith in both their religion and in their newly born city.

The sacrifices and hardships undergone; the difficulties and obstacles overcome; the welcome sight of a visiting missionary; the joy of participating in the holy sacrifice of Mass is best told by one who lived in Atlanta at that time.

The first priest ordained from Atlanta was Rev. Father J. A. Doonan, S. J. In April 1909, he dictated the following personal recollections of “The Early Days of Catholicity in Atlanta” to his nephew, Rev. John B. Doonan, S. J. It is through the courtesy of this family, one of the oldest and most respected families in the city, that we are enabled to publish these “Personal Recollections.”

“In 1846, my father, Terence Doonan, removed his little family from Augusta to establish business and a home at the terminus in the DeKalb County of the Western Atlantic and Georgia Railroads, then known as Marthasville, named from the daughter of the Governor of the state, the present site of the flourishing city of Atlanta. He carried with him a promise from Augusta s saintly pastor, Father John Barry, in later years the second Bishop of Savannah, that he himself would occasionally attend the religious wants of the family, a promise for many years faithfully redeemed. Of the Apostolic spirit of Father Barry, aglow with the charity of Christ, evidence is furnished by the fact that he took under his roof, housing and supporting them, numbers of orphan boys, left homeless and unprotected after the fearful cholera epidemic in the decade '30. To consuming zeal this good priest united personal sanctity, the outcome of a true spirit of prayer and love of mortification.

“Tradition has it that before our arrival Mass had been said in Atlanta for a little band of Catholics employed in the construction of the railroad -- the celebrant, a missionary, whose name has not come down to us. Our first house, a frame building on Whitehall Street, between Alabama and Hunter on the site on which Nunnally's now stands, was one of the earliest erected in the village. In this unpretentious home all the early Masses, previous to the erection of the first Church, were offered and the Sacraments of Baptism and Penance administered. An ordinary bureau placed in front of the wooden mantle over the fireplace served as an Altar. In those primitive days pageants were unknown. Occasional parades of Masons and Odd Fellows furnished to a child's eye the only attractive display in reach; so that on a Sunday morning, when I saw offering Holy Mass at my mother's bureau a priest robed in red vestments, the splendor of his appearance cast under a shadow the glitter of the dazzling Masonic regalia and perhaps caused the first stirrings of the desire some day to don a similar glowing garb.

“Not for several years had the handful of Catholics in Atlanta the services of a resident pastor, meanwhile being dependent, thanks to Father Barry, upon the administrations of occasional visiting priests. These ordinarily were the guests of my father's family. To my brother and myself, despite what seemed an infliction -- the protracted night prayers invariably recited by the priest for his assembled flock -- such visits were warmly welcomed as they furnished an excuse for the two of us to make a house to house visitation of the few Catholic families to announce the ever gladsome tidings of Mass to be said the next morning in our house. For such welcome news recompense was immediate and abundant in jacket-pockets stuffed with cakes and apples. The arrival in the home of perhaps the first piano introduced into Atlanta was welcomed not so much for the prospective pleasure of music to be drawn from it as for the suggestion immediately made when taken from its packing-case: ‘What a fine altar it will make!’ a holy use to which it was ever afterwards put until the opening of the first frame church.

“Of the holy men who served Atlanta's little flock in those early days, three bore the name of O'Neill, two -- uncle and nephew -- having the same Christian name, Jeremiah F., familiarly though respectfully distinguished as ‘Old Father Jerry’ and ‘Young Father Jerry.’ The elder of these two priests was a missionary, cast in the true mold of a hero. Seemingly immune from fatigue under labor however hard and protracted, the strength of this septuagenarian apparently waxed more vigorous under the hardships and privations of his truly apostolic life. He was a very ready speaker, given to polemical rather than devotional sermons. More than once I was sent from the sacristy to survey the congregation and report approximately upon the number of Protestants present. Upon the percentage reported I found by experience depended the length of the sermon. Both uncle and nephew were men of fine culture, for their opportunities well versed in philosophy and theology, and for their day exceptionally good linguists and musicians. The elder was an excellent performer on the flute, the younger on the violin and flute also. His musical attainments served the elder missioner in good stead on a journey through North Carolina with John England, the first occupant of the see of Charleston. Journeying through the western country of the old North State, largely populated by Scotch Presbyterians, Bishop England and Father O'Neill halted at sunset before the cabin of one of the mountaineers, asking hospitality for the night, and supper. They were met with refusal. With his ready Irish wit, Father O'Neill pleaded with the mountaineer for a supper for their horse, adding with a twinkle in his eye, ‘The beast is a Papist only under compulsion.’ As one of the stable hands led the horse to his supper, Bishop England walking under the pine trees began the recitation of his office, Father O'Neill meanwhile, seated on the woodpile beside the cabin door, played upon his flute The Last Rose of Summer. His success confirms the statement of one of England's master singers, ‘Music hath charm to soothe the savage breast.’ For as he replaced his flute within the pocket of his outer coat, the farmer turning to Bishop England said. ‘Mister, if you make your man play that over again, you can both have supper and beds here tonight.’

“As has already been said, Father Jerry, senior, was a ready speaker. Precise truth seems to demand a qualification of this statement. He was ever ready to begin, but by no means equally ready to conclude his sermon. In illustrations of this distinction another incident of his missionary labors in Georgia may be recorded. He had arranged to receive into the Church a certain Mrs. Taylor; and announced that the ceremony of Baptism was to take place before the celebration of High Mass in the country school house, where he was to conduct Divine Service. On the given Sunday, in due time, Father O'Neill appeared before a congregation largely non-Catholic, which filled the principal room of the little school house. Turning to the kneeling neophyte and those present he said that he would explain in a few words the ceremony which they were about to witness. He began at 10:30 A. M. and as usual became oblivious to the passing of time. The expectant congregation had all but despaired witnessing anything in the shape of ceremony or ritual, when the venerable missionary producing his watch remarked, a benignant smile playing upon his countenance, ‘It is now past the hour when it is permitted me to begin the celebration of Holy Mass, but if you will come next Sunday, Good Friends, we will try again and hope to get through.’

“The younger Father O'Neill was the first resident pastor of Atlanta, and for several years a beloved member of our household, in which his presence by each and every member thereof was regarded as a benediction. Under his supervision was erected the first frame church of Atlanta, to which the title of Immaculate Conception was attached, even many years before the definition of that dogma. Circumstances attending the dedication of this humble temple remain indelibly impressed upon my memory. Bishop Reynolds, the successor of the immortal England in the see of Charleston, then exercising jurisdiction over both the Carolinas and Georgia, had come to Atlanta, accompanied by several of his priests for the dedication. On arriving in our home he discovered, when he opened his trunks, that he had failed to place therein a copy of the Pontificale, containing the ritual for the functions to be performed. It must be remembered that in those days the telegraph was an unknown servitor of man, and our modern express service had yet to be perfected. To procure in season the missing Pontificale, it was necessary to call into requisition the services of two brothers, Irish Catholics, Sheridan by name, locomotive engineers on the Georgia railroad. At that time this railroad ran two trains in the twenty-four hours, one by day and one night. The engineer of the day run to Augusta, was directed to go at once on his arrival in that city to the parsonage, secure the missing volume and give it to the care of his brother for the night run back to Atlanta. I perfectly recall how on the morning of the day set for the dedication, Bishop Reynolds and attendant priests, surrounded by members of the family, stood on the rear porch of the Whitehall Street house, straining eyes to catch the first glimpse of white steam rising from Mr. Sheridan's locomotive, and the quickly delivered mission entrusted to myself to hurry down by the pathway through the woods, since supplanted by the Temple Court and other of Atlanta's prominent buildings, to the car shed, get the desired book and place it into the hands of the Bishop.

“The little frame Church, neither in its interior or exterior, could lay claim to any beauty. Rudely constructed pews, untouched by paint, unrelieved by cushions, filled the main floor of the edifice; said being made of roughly planed pine boards having its only suggestion to the title of ornamentation in the frequently recurring pine knot-holes. One of these holes was responsible in after years for the suspension of a marriage ceremony. The groom on the occasion referred to, was, as is still the wont of grooms in similar cases, a victim of considerable nervousness; and as he extracted from his pocket the wedding ring, he fumbled it and let it fall. The eyes of the interested congregation watched it rolling in dangerous proximity to one of the pine knot-holes, through which before it could be rescued it fell, necessitating the retirement of the writer, then an acolyte, to crawl beneath the Church and recover the missing symbol of conjugal fidelity.

“How meagre were the facilities for equipping even so modest a church as that first erected in Atlanta may be inferred from the fact that the first holy water font was fashioned by a tinsmith from a model cut in cardboard furnished from our home. Another incident illustrative of primitive conditions may be recalled. I was serving Mass in the little church, young Father O'Neill our pastor and our house guest being the celebrant, the congregation consisting exclusively of my mother; when the celebrant at the offertory removed the veil from the chalice, he discovered that there was no host upon the paten. Signaling to me, he bade me inform my mother of the fact. She in turn ordered me to hurry home and have my aunt bake a host for the need. This was done at the ironing board by the deft use of two flat irons, one inverted, its handle placed between two bricks set on their edge. A spoonful of flour paste dropped upon the heated iron was then baked by having the second iron superimposed. Ordinarily this process had to be repeated several times before a host of the required whiteness and unscorched could be trimmed for the Holy Sacrifice. Naturally both my aunt and myself were eager on this occasion to secure one such. Yet for myself I contrived to suppress all useless anxiety and futile hurry by the reflection, 'Nothing can be done at the altar till I get back with the host.'

“Among the prominent members of the congregation of those early days, a few cherished names still linger in my memory: the brothers Lynch, three or four, two of whom had large families; William Mann, our next door neighbor on Whitehall Street, my godfather, his estimable wife and four sons. Most eminent among our little flock was Mrs. Daniel Dougherty, a lady held in high esteem for many amiable qualities not less than for her stalwart Catholicity. One of my earliest services as an acolyte for a ministering priest in Atlanta was as an attendant to the administration of the last rites to the father of Mrs. Dougherty, a Mr. Connelly, a venerable and staunch Catholic of the primitive Irish type. On the occasion of my last visit to Atlanta, Mr. Connelly's great-great-granddaughter helped to furnish music at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in the old convent, which used to adjoin the Church of The Immaculate Conception. So memory carries me back along the line of five succeeding generations. The Malones and the Cannons were also devout and faithful members of the congregation.

“The first visit of Savannah's first Bishop, Right Rev. F. X. Gartland, was a noteworthy event in the Catholic circles of Atlanta. It occurred in the spring of '51 or '52. For many days his coming an event eagerly looked for particularly in our home, where he was to lodge as a guest, furnished the general topic of conversation; it was, too, an occasion of no little preparation in Atlanta's solitary place of Catholic worship. He arrived shortly after midnight; the pastor of the church though in consequence that he would not rise at an early hour for the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice, and had therefore made no preparation for his escort to the church. The writer early in the morning at play on the sidewalk before our home saw descending the stairway an ecclesiastic, a stranger to his eyes, of very gracious and imposing presence. Approaching the boy, who immediately concluded that this must be the Bishop, the stranger asked him if he could serve Mass and knew the way to the church. Both questions answered in the affirmative, the Bishop and the child, not a little elated at the importance thus suddenly thrust upon him started together for the church, which stood then on the same site as it does today on the corner of Central Avenue and Hunter Street. Knowing that in view of the approaching episcopal visit, preparations under the care of the ladies of the congregation directed by the pastor had been in process for several days, the prospective acolyte was anxiously cherishing the hope that the new Bishop would find everything entirely to his taste and in strict accord with the rubrical requirements. No slight jar was given these same hopes, when on entering the church the first object to catch the eye was an article of altar linen lying upon the floor at our feet, where evidently it had been accidentally dropped by some busy workers the night before. Stooping to pick it up, I made the best apologetical explanation that my disturbed feelings would permit. Needless to say the incident was not referred to by either the Bishop or his acolyte when at the breakfast table an hour later both met the pastor and the lady director of the Sanctuary Society.”