The Catholic World, Vol. 15, Nos. 85-90, April 1872-September 1872 / A Monthly Magazine

rk was followed by the erection of others at Philadelphia in 1809, and Richmond and Cincinnati in 1821. The two Carolinas, in which the Catholics had hitherto been an obscure an

is, Mo. (organized in 1826), Detroit, Mich. (1832), and Vincennes, Ind. (1834), all took their names from ancient French

to 232, and in 1834 probably exceeded 300. At the date of the next official returns (1840) there were 482 priests and three more bishoprics-those of Natchez, Miss., and Nas

until 1848, nor a bishop's see until 1850. In place of it

during this period was most perceptible in the North and West. Among the new sees were Hartford, Conn., Albany and Buffalo, N. Y., Pittsburg, Penn., Cleveland, O., Chicago, Ill., Milwaukee, Wis., St. Paul, Minn., Oregon City and Nesqualy, Oregon, and Wh

San Francisco and

the dominant party had more ways of showing their hatred of the Church than by mere petty vexations. In Boston things went so far that a nunnery was pillaged and burned by a mob. It is from this time that we must date the origin of the Know-Nothing movement, directed ostensibly against foreigners, but undoubte

7

, Sault St. Marie, Alton, and Brooklyn. Two were in the South-Covington and Natchitoches. There were thus in the United States, in 1860, forty-three b

n 1858 by a Protestant author sets down the number of Catholics as 3,177,140. Dr. Baird, a Protestant minister, published at Paris in 1857 an essay on religion in the United States-an essay, be it remarked, which showed the Catholics no favor-in

artly from official documents published by various ecclesiastical authorit

too fast, they endanger their means of support. Now, if priests cannot live in America without a certain number of parishioners to support them, we may take this number as a basis for calculating the minimum of the Catholic population; and we may safely say that the population will be in reality much greater than this minimum; because, as we can testify fro

tish Provinces, in which the statistics of religious belief are included in the general census. Setting aside Lower Canada, where the Catholic population is as compact as it is in France, we find that in Upper {8} Canada, a country which resembles the Western United States, the ratio in 1860 was one priest for every 1,850 Catholics, and in New Brunswick, a territory very like New England, one for every 2,400. Our average ratio of one for every 2,000 cannot, therefore, be far from the truth. We have made due account of all data by which this ratio could be either raised or lowered in particular times and places. We have ourselves made investigations in certain districts, and persons well qualified to speak on the subject have given us information about others. The result of our corrected calculation gives us 4,400,000 as the Catholic population of the United States in 1860, the date of the last general census. We shall give presently the distribution of this total among the several states; but we wish first to call attention to another fact of great importance which appears from our figures. In 1808 the Catholics were 100,000 in a total population of 6,500,000, or 1/65th of the wh