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a mission given for the spiritual benefit of the Italian Catholics of Portage, of whom there are quite a number, by an Italian missionary priest which is reported to have been very successful, the Italians being without a church of their own in Portage, the Poles, Slavs and Greeks having each a church served by priests of their own nationality.
Rev. Joseph H. Farran, the Present Rector.
Father "Joe" Farran, as he is familiarly called, was born at Munster, Cambria County. He was ordained at St. Vincent's Seminary, Beatty, Penn'a, July 7, 1905. He was appointed to succeed Father Welch at St. Augustine, July, 1912. He is a brother of Rev. Pollard W. Farran, rector of St. John the Baptist's church, Frugality, who also attended the St. Augustine parish during the recent absence of his brother in Europe.
After Father Farran took charge of the parish, he soon discovered that there was need for a new rectory and set about securing it. He, being quite an architectural genius, as well as a learned and zealous priest, drafted the plans for the present rectory which is a large frame structure, cased with brick, of twelve rooms, six down stairs and six on the second story, with two bath rooms and two sun porches, and a veranda on part of three sides of the main building. The roof is of asbestos. The plan of the house is most utilitarian. There is a chapel in the building for week-day winter use.
The building was not let out to contract, but workmen were hired, and Father Farran superintended the work of construction, and as he had the hearty cooperation of his parishioners, an illustration of which fact was that one day during the construction of the building sixty teams belonging to farmers, worked gratis, so that when the building was completed in 1914, the entire outlay in money was about $4,000, whereas, the entire value of the house was perhaps double that amount.
An incident of the building of this rectory which is on the site of the old one erected many years previously, probably by Father John Burns, is that Father Farran lived in a part of the old house until part of the present one was erected, when he moved into it, and so mechanically was the work done that it is not observable where the connections between the different parts was made.
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