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History of Parish of St. Augustine, St. Augustine, Pa. |
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ners, unfeigned piety and untiring zeal. "Being made
perfect in a short space, he fulfilled a long time!!"
Wisdom IV, 10.
R. I. P.
Underneath is a Latin Cross.
Father Henry Lemke after he came to Cambria County was for a time stationed in Ebensburg.
St. Joseph's, Hart's Sleeping-Place.
The next congregation to be formed was at Hart's Sleeping-Place, about two and a half miles to the northwest of Carrolltown, where a settlement of Germans and some other natives of Europe, and a couple of Irish Americans - James and Michael Kennedy, had located. This congregation was organized some time about 1830 and Father Gallitzin sometimes said Mass there.
Hart's Sleeping-Place derives its name from the fact that Joe Hart, a German trader with the Indians used to sleep there at night on the leaning trunk of a cherry tree, his pack-horses loaded with peltries tethered near a fire to keep wild animals away from them. This sleeping-place was located a few hundred feet to the northward of the old Kittanning Path as the writer has seen from a map constructed by P. J. Little, Esq.
Hart, who, Mr. Little says, was the first white man to use the path must have been acquainted with it at an early day as Conrad Weiser, a noted interpreter, and Frederick Post probably used it as early as 1732; and his last known travel over it was in one of the French and Indian wars, perhaps as early as 1744, when arriving one day at Blacklog Valley he saw outlined with charcoal on the trunk of a fallen chestnut tree used by the Indians as a bulletin board, hieroglyphics made by Indians, indicating that they had gone on the war-path to which was added, "No hurt Hart." Hart, deeming "discretion the better part of valor," kept aloof from them.
Father Gallitzin was the first to serve the people at this mission. A church was built about 1834, a fac simile of a subscription list for the building of which was published in Caldwell's Atlas of Cambria County. The name of Emericus Bender for $20 heads the list, and subscriptions down to one as low as 50 cents are noted. Emericus Bender was, about 1828, one of the County Commissioners
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