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History of Parish of St. Augustine, St. Augustine, Pa. |
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Father Gallitzin's Right Name Reestablished
By Act of the Legislature.
The Pennsylvania Legislature, on petition of Father Gallitzin, dated December 5, 1809, stating that his real name having become known to many, and that legal complications might arise on account of his disposing of property as Demetrius Augustine Smith, he therefore prayed to be allowed to resume his real name, Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, and to enjoy, under that name, the same benefits and privileges to which he became entitled by naturalization under the name of Augustine Smith.
This petition was on the sixteenth of the same month referred to a committee composed of Messrs. McSherry, Bethel and Weiss, and an act granting the request was passed.
Father Gallitzin, early had a water-power saw-mill built on Clearfield Creek, where B. P. Anderson's mill was afterwards located. He also built a grist-mill on a small branch of the same stream near Loretto. This was about the fourth grist mill built in the county-John Storm having built the first, in 1792, on Clearfield Creek, afterwards Seibert's mill at Siberton Station, C. & C. Railroad; John Horner built the second grist-mill and saw-mill on Solomon's Run, Johnstown, in 1793; Thomas Croyle built a grist-mill on the Little Conemaugh at Summerhill in 1801.
To provide groceries and other necessaries for his colony, Father Gallitzin periodically sent a team to Baltimore. It is related that upon one occasion the driver gambled away a four-horse team and wagon, returning with the whip alone, of all the outfit, and presented it to the priest. Father Gallitzin, his patience taxed beyond endurance, took the whip and struck the offender a blow across the face, when the latter turned the other side in obedience to the injunction of Christ, "If a man smite thee on one side of the face, turn thou the other." Father Gallitzin instantly dropped the whip and thus ended the unpleasant incident.
Coming home one moonlight night, at eleven o'clock, as was related to the writer by the late 'Squire Joseph Miller, of Wilmore, who was raised by Father Gallitzin, and often served Mass for him, Father Gallitzin saw through the spaces between the logs in his log barn, a man in his hay-mow in the act of shouldering a bundle of hay tied in a rope. Suddenly dropping his load and unloosing the rope
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