The Abbey In 1858

“It was exactly twelve years since I, with four students and fifteen farmers and tradesmen, destined to become lay brothers, left New York (having arrived there on September 16, 1846), and set out for the interior of Pennsylvania in order to look for a suitable site for a monastery. Divine Providence led me here, and now I am the head of an abbey which has 43 priests, 12 clerics, 15 novices, and as many scholastics, in addition to over 100 lay brothers. We have a complete gymnasium [classical high school], and lyceum [philosophical – theological college], a seminarium puerorum, and a secular boys’ seminary. Our priests minister at many and varied places, from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the outer borders of civilization in the West along the great Mississippi and Missouri rivers. There are presently 3 priests of our Order in Newark at a bay of the Atlantic Ocean, in the state of New Jersey; at Bellefonte in the State of Pennsylvania in the Diocese of Philadelphia are 2; at St. Marys-Town are 3 and 1 at Cooper Settlement in the Diocese of Erie; two are staying at Carrolltown, 1 in Indiana, 1 in Greensburg and 2 in Butler in the Diocese of Pittsburgh; 3 are in Covington, Diocese of Covington, in the state of Kentucky; 1 in Leavenworth and 2 in Doniphan, in Kansas; and 1 in Omaha City, capital of the immense territory of Nebraska. The very reverend bishop of Kansas resides in Leavenworth and has Nebraska under his jurisdiction also.”

—Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B.

—From Boniface Wimmer, Abbot of Saint Vincent in Pennsylvania, translated by Dr. Maria Von Mickwitz and Father Warren Murrman, O.S.B., editor.