|
History of Parish of St. Augustine, St. Augustine, Pa. |
55 |
|
HISTORY OF
ST. AUGUSTINE'S PARISH
SECOND EPOCH.
Early Settlers - First Attended Mass at Loretto, and Sick Were attended by Father Gallitzin. Father Lemke Said Masses in Various Houses. Organization of the Parish. Its Various Pastors Down to the Present Time.
After Father Gallitzin located in the McGuire settlement in 1799, the colony of Catholics he gathered about him spread rapidly, and early in the nineteenth century there were several pioneers and their families located in what afterwards became Clearfield Township and the first congregation sometimes called the Loup Congregation or the St. Augustine Congregation, was located therein.
The name Loup (not Loop) came from the name given by the French to a branch of the Chouanan (Shawnese) tribe, the de Loupes or des Loupes.
The French, be it remembered, early explored Western New York and Western Pennsylvania as well as the Mississippi Valley and the chaplains of their exploring expedition were priests well educated in the art of cartography, one, Pere (Father) de La Roche, was the first to discover petroleum near Olean, New York, in the seventeenth century and marked the place on his map, "Fontaine Bitumine." Father Hennepin, another French priest, was the first to discover bituminous coal in what is now the United States, on Illinois River. Pere Bonnekamp, a Jesuit priest, a mathematician and geographer who accompanied Celeron's expedition down "Belle Riviere" (Beautiful River), now known as the Allegheny River, in 1749, was the first priest of whom we have an authentic record, who said Mass in Western Pennsylvania.
Celeron's expedition was sent down the Allegheny River to lay claim to the region which the French called
|
|
