Diocese Of Trenton history

Records show that mass was celebrated in the printing office of Isaac Collins at Queen and Second Streets (now State and Broad Streets) in the heart of the Trenton business district starting around 1804.

When the dioceses of New York and Philadelphia were established in 1808, West Jersey, the southern part, came under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishops of Philadelphia.

Morgan Edwards in his History of New Jersey Baptists, speaking of Peter Wilson, says “he was a man to be wondered at.” His connection with the church lasted twenty‑two years, from 1787 to 1809 - the longest pastorate or semi‑pastorate in the church's history.

The building was of simple and modest design. It may be well imagined that the dedication of Trenton's first Catholic church, which occurred in 1814, the Right Rev.

New Jersey was organized as a diocese in 1785 but did not obtain a bishop until 1815, when Doctor John Croes, then rector of Christ Church, New Brunswick, was chosen for the office.

The first building was erected in 1819 on the plot now occupied by the present building.

After the great schism of 1827, those who adhered to the old doctrine formed a separate Meeting.

Bishop Francis Kenrick dedicated the St Mary’s Church in Pleasant Mills on August 15, 1830, the fourth Catholic church in New Jersey and the first in the present-day Diocese of Camden.

While acting as secretary of the American Sunday School Union, which office he entered upon in 1832, he prepared himself for the ministry without taking a course in a theological seminary.

A reincorporation was effected July 18, 1834, adopting the present name; the trustees were Leonard Scott, William Water, Henry Pearson, George B. Cole, John Treyer, George McMullen and Thomas Voorhees.

The Hopewell Church property, the legal title to which devolved upon the congregation of St Michael's Church as the direct heir and successor to this congregation was sold by St Michael's Church in 1838, the parish retaining only a small section which had been used as a burying ground.

Reference is elsewhere made to a Dutch Reformed Congregation which came into existence about 1840 and was dissolved some three years later.

He was called to the pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church of Trenton and was thereupon ordained and installed, August 11, 1841, when he was thirty-five years of age.

In the year 1846 a group withdrew from the original First Church and purchased the property of the Dutch Reformed Church on Front Street, where was organized and established the Front Street Methodist Episcopal Church.

Finally, Father Edmund Waldron, the first priest assigned to work primarily in South Jersey, arrived in Gloucester City in 1848 in spite of warning that he might be stoned there.

On May 2, 1849, the Third Church was organized, with thirteen communicants from the First and four from other churches.

In 1853 the first building was erected, called Homestead.

Three of his daughters attained high rank in the Sisters of Mercy whose mother-house is near Pittsburgh, Pa., and a fourth daughter, Anna, was church organist and among the earliest teachers (1854) in St John's school.

In 1855, Father James Moran, the first priest ordained in New Jersey, was sent as pastor of the new parish.

On August 3, 1856, this section was incorporated under a new name, but the charter was never delivered, or if so has been missing for a long time.

THE first organization in the life of Trenton Jewry was the Har Sinai Cemetery Association, formed in 1857.

On the sixth of November, 1858, a group of some fifty-one communicants of the Third Church formed the Fourth Church.

A lot for a new church with a frontage of seventy feet on Academy Street was purchased for $3,500, January 25, 1860, and steps were immediately taken to erect a building, the cornerstone of which was laid on June 15 of the same year.

Hamilton Schuyler is the son of the late Anthony Schuyler, D.D., formerly rector of Grace Church, Orange, N.J. He was born in Oswego, N.Y., in 1862.

Another society of Adventists or Second Adventists known as "Messiah Church," being a branch of a congregation in Morrisville, was established in 1863.

In 1865 he purchased the ground an which St Mary’s Cathedral stands, at Warren and Bank Streets.

After the chapel was built in 1870, the Central Church under the pastor who succeeded the Rev.

Sunday school devotional meetings were maintained until 1891. It was under the inspiration of Pastor George W. Lasher of the First Church that lots were bought and a chapel was built in the sixth ward, the chapel being dedicated on March 19, 1871.

In 1872 Trenton Circuit was formed out of Homestead and Ruslingville, with the Rev.

The building was constructed and the first regular service held in it was on Sunday, January 12, 1873, with the Rev.

A church organization was formed February 23, 1874, with twenty-eight members.

He was ordained and installed pastor of the Prospect Street Church October 14, 1875, of which he was the first pastor.

He also was a champion of education and one of the monuments of his devotion to this cause was St John's school and parish hall on Lamberton Street, which was opened in 1876-77.

Bernard Tobish, who has conducted a men's furnishing shop hem for nearly half a century, came to Trenton in 1877 and opened a store on State Street.

His first charge was as missionary in Southern Florida, 1881 - 84.

In 1884, the Fathers of Mercy established their seminary and college in Vineland, and Trenton’s bishop sent his seminarians for training and his priests for retreat to Sacred Heart College and Theological Seminary, which lasted only 10 years.

In 1885 the congregation established a place of burial on Vroom Street, adjoining Har Sinai Cemetery.

The outcome was the organization of a Sunday school under the auspices of the session of the First Church, February 13, 1887.

McCormick’s sketch of the "Missing Govermor's" career appears in full as Appendix H in Smith's History of New Jersey, Sharp's reprint (1890 edition), which may be found in the State Library.

Elijah Lucas of the First Church, the Fifth Baptist Church was organized in 1891 with thirty-one members.

The congregation grew until the building would not hold the people who desired to attend, and in the year 1893 it was decided to construct the present handsome building of brownstone which was then and still remains one of the finest church buildings in the New Jersey Conference.

The Magyar Reformed Church of Trenton was organized on September 23, 1894.

Bishop McFaul continued also as rector until February 1, 1895, when he appointed to that office the Rev.

Coming to St Michael's, Trenton, in 1896 he had a most fruitful ministry here, and won the esteem and good will of all classes by his genial, warm-hearted manner and sincere devotion to his work.

A mission for the Italians of Chambershurg was opened in the summer of 1897, with Vincent Serafini, a student at Princeton Theological Seminary, in charge.

The first services, beginning January 8, 1899, were conducted by the Rev.

He received the degree of B.A. at St Bonaventure's College, Allegheny, N.Y., and completed his theological studies at Rome, Italy, where he was ordained May 20, 1900.

The mission in Wilbur, from which the Gethsemane Church has grown was started by the Clinton Avenue Church in 1902.

In July 1903 the congregation sold the little temple on Montgomery Street to Bayard Post, No.

In the year 1904 the Chambers Street Church was incorporated with the Rev.

The Greenwood Avenue Church was the outgrowth of a Sunday school organized in the Cook School in 1907.

In 1908 he was commissioned to establish St Mark's parish, Buffalo, which started with 32 families and now has 1,684 souls.

From the trustees of the First Baptist Church of Trenton in 1911 the trustees of Wesley M.E. Church bought their present church property for $4,300.

William D. Thatcher, who began his ministry with the church in 1912.

He was educated at the college and theological seminary of St Bonaventure, Allegheny, N.Y., and at the University of St Appollinaris, the Pontifical Roman Seminary, Italy, from which he received the degrees of D.D. and D.C.L. In 1913 he received an I.L.D. from St Bonaventure's.

In 1915 a group of people of the non‑evangelical type formed a society for the promotion of "liberal" religion in the community.

He died on June 1, 1916, and the funeral services were held from the First Church with interment in Riverview Cemetery, Trenton.

On January 23, 1917, the Presbytery of New Brunswick unveiled in the First Church yard a monument erected to the memory of the Rev.

His twenty-fifth anniversary was observed by the parish an September 24, 1918.

Vladimir A. Kashiw in September 1919 and was incorporated the same year.

In January 1920, upon the unanimous vote of the members present at a meeting held for that purpose, it was decided to sell this property, owing to an increasingly noisy environment, and to secure a lot more suitably located.

Raymond A. Ketchledge, 1921‑. The church was first located on Union at the head of Fall Street, but in the pastorate of Mr.

16 The First Methodist Episcopal Church of New Jersey, Sesquicentennial, 1772 - 1922, edited by Frank Duffield Lawrence and Howell Quigley.

Subsequently a hall was rented on East Hanover Street and services were held there until a church was built on Jackson Street in 1924.

In 1925 the congregation purchased a lot on Bellevue Avenue where a new temple will be erected in the near future.

The formal opening of the temple was on Friday evening, July 23, 1926, and in October of that year it was dedicated.

On October 22, 1927, the fifty-fifth anniversary was observed during the pastorate of the Rev.

Elder's funeral was held in Trinity M.E. Church on Wednesday, March 15, 1928, in the presence of an overflowing congregation, and many warm tributes were paid to his character and work, including one by Maud Ballington Booth of the Volunteers of America.

He was canonized in 1930 along with seven others similarly executed by the Iroquois – five French priests and two laymen – the first martyrs in the new lands.

With little else than faith and courage they undertook the task and in 1942 the first Holy Family Church was completed.

St Bartholomew mission in Camden was opened in 1947.

On January 28, 1950, Ahr was appointed the seventh Bishop of Trenton by Pope Pius XII. He received his episcopal consecration on the following March 20 from Archbishop Thomas J. Walsh, with Bishops Bartholomew J. Eustace and Thomas A. Boland serving as co-consecrators.

In early 1954, Bishop Ahr launched The Monitor, the official weekly newspaper of the diocese, to serve primarily as a medium through which members of the diocesan family might gain a greater knowledge of all that concerned their faith.

There are now over 4000 families in our parish community, and over 400 students in our school. It was on June 12, 1959, that the Bishop appointed Father J. Morgan Kelly to begin the formation of a new parish which was to be called Saint Bartholomew.

By September 1964, Father Kelly opened the Parish School of Saint Bartholomew with 130 pupils in grades 1 and 2.

On 13 January 1991, he opened the Fourth Diocesan Synod during a Mass in St Mary's Cathedral, 60 years after the Third Synod.

In addition to a premium edition of The Monitor dedicated to the event, a video commemorating Mother Teresa’s visit to the Diocese in 1995 was released.

The first rectory was a home in the Country Farms section of the Township, purchased in April 1996.

The pope accepted the resignation as of July 1, 1997, whereupon Smith succeeded to the office of Bishop of Trenton.

Weekend Masses continued there with daily Mass celebrated at the rectory until 2002.

The same month, it was also revealed that since 2005, the Diocese of Trenton worked with the Archdiocese of Newark and Diocese of Metuchen in a compensation plan which involved paying victims of former Cardinal, Archbishop of Newark, and Bishop of Metuchen Theodore McCarrick.

In January 2006, Bishop Smith announced the "Commitment to Excellence" initiative and action plan that enumerated new measures in school leadership, marketing and financial management, and benchmarks that schools needed to achieve in enrollment, class size and curriculum development.

Early in 2011, Bishop O’Connell launched his monthly live radio call-in program, “A Shepherd’s Voice,” on Domestic Church Media, allowing Catholics in all four counties of the Diocese to hear and interact with their bishop.