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of Cambria County. He was the ancestor of numerous descendants amongst whom are E. A. Bender, of Carrolltown and A. E. Bender, better known as "Bert" Bender of the Bender Hotel, Ebensburg.
Later on Father Lemke, who first attended the church from Ebensburg, became resident pastor, as a list of subscriptions headed by handwriting of Father Gallitzin in 1834 indicates. Father Gallitzin styled the then new pastor "Rev. Henry Lamke."
This church was long in disuse, but owing to the influx of foreign miners to the mines at St. Benedict, is now attended by a Benedictine Father from Carrolltown.
The next congregation to be organized was that of St. John Gaulbert, Johnstown, in 1835. A brick church was erected on a lot donated for the purpose by Peter Levergood on Church Street, near where the Southern Cambria Street Railway goes down the steep grade to the old American House.
This church bore the unique distinction of having been the only church within the Diocese of Pittsburg which was ever sold for debt by the sheriff. It was, however redeemed from the purchaser, who, if the writer mistakes not, was Peter Levergood.
This church was probably first attended by Father McGirr from his farm near Ebensburg and perhaps some times by Father Lemke, about once a month. Later on appears from "Souvenir of Loretto Centenary" which contains on page 47: "Register of Baptisms, Marriages, etc., of the mission which comprises Ebensburg, Summit, Jefferson, Johnstown, Reservoir from the 1st of October, 1841, when I, Matthew William Gibson, received jurisdiction from the Rt. Rev. Francis Patrick Kenrick, Bishop of Philadelphia, etc."
Father Gibson was an English priest. It is said that he built more churches than any other priest who ever lived in Western Pennsylvania, one of which was in Hexham, England. He was a brother to the wife of the late Joseph McDonald, Esq., of Ebensburg. His remains are interred in Ebensburg in the old cemetery where also repose those of Fathers Terence McGirr and R. C. Christ, as well as those of Gather Gahagan, already noted.
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