The History of St. Brigid Parish

It was on an otherwise unremarkable Sunday after Pentecost, October 3, 1926, that St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church came of age. At 10:30 a.m. that Sunday morning, the Rt. Rev. Thomas M. O’Leary, bishop of the vast Springfield diocese, led a procession of more than a dozen priests into the wooden church at Dublin and Pearl streets to mark the 75^th anniversary of Millbury’s first Roman Catholic parish.

A single photograph in the next morning’s Worcester Daily Telegram records the moment when the bishop and his entourage ascended the church’s front steps, flanked by members of the Knights of Columbus.

“The edifice was filled to its capacity by people in all walks of life,” the newspaper reported, “many former parishioners coming many miles to attend the diamond jubilee services which had been arranged by the venerable pastor, the Rev. Daniel M. Tully…”

Parishioners that morning would hear brief remarks from their bishop, and a rather longer sermon and history lesson from the Rev. George A. Strohaver, S.J. of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. That afternoon, the church was full once more as 118 of the parish’s boys and girls received the sacrament of confirmation.

But the day’s biggest surprise belonged to Father Tully, who announced that the church and parish’s rightful patroness was indeed the fifth-century Irish abbess at Kildare, St. Brigid, rather than the St. Bridget many had assumed.

The bishop’s presence, 75 years of history, and Father Tully’s announcement served to confirm the identity and place of a Catholic parish in what had for so many years been a predominantly Yankee and Protestant region.

Father Tully was also looking to the future that day, laying plans for the new church he knew would be needed to meet the needs of a growing flock. But it would be another 30 years – years of Depression, war, and recovery – before his dream would be realized on another Sunday in October.

The story of how St. Brigid’s took root in Millbury is intimately linked with the history of the town itself. Some of that history flows just yards behind today’s church and rectory. The Blackstone River, of course, spurred the development of mill industries from Worcester south to Rhode Island. But it was the development of the Blackstone Canal beginning in the 1820s that introduced Catholicism to the area on a large scale.

Work on the canal had begun in Providence, Rhode Island in 1825, and in June 1826, Tobias Boland and 30 other Irishmen arrived in Worcester to begin construction on the northerly stretches of the project. Within a year, more than 1,000 Irish workers had brought their skills to bear on the project, which opened to commercial traffic a year later.

The 1830s and 1840s were a time of rapid industrialization for Massachusetts, with the mills of the Merrimack and Blackstone river valleys drawing a quarter million or more immigrant workers, predominantly French-Canadians and Irish.

Within a decade, hundreds of Catholics were living in Worcester and Millbury. While their presence was viewed with mistrust by some, their labor was indispensable. The Blackstone Canal itself had flourished for just seven years before giving way to the more efficient railroads that soon crisscrossed New England, but the cultural and religious traditions of the Irish and other Catholics had come to stay.

In 1833, responding to appeals from the Catholic families in town, Father James Fitton paid several visits to Millbury, said the first Masses, presided over the first Catholic marriage, and performed the first baptism, that of Charles Ryan.

For the next decade or more, the spiritual and sacramental needs of Millbury’s Catholics were served by Father Fitton and his successors from St. John’s in Worcester. On Sunday when there was no Mass in Millbury, the town’s Catholics would journey to Worcester for services.

By 1850, Millbury’s Catholics decided the time had come to build a church of their own. The church was built that fall, at the corner of Providence Road and what was then known as Dublin Street (now Pearl Street), on land donated by Michael Coogan. According to parish histories and popular legend, some in the community gave money, others loaned their oxen, and many contributed muscle and sweat, working even by the light of the moon so that the parish could have a home of its own by winter. Their faith and work were rewarded as Mass was celebrated in the completed church by Father Matthew Gibson on Christmas Day 1850.

A year later, on October 2, 1851, Bishop John B. Fitzpatrick of Boston attended the new parish’s formal dedication. It was Bishop Fitzpatrick who placed the church under the patronage of St. Brigid, and appointed Father Zepherine L’Evecque as its first pastor.

Over the next century, the church would change and grow with the dictates and tastes of pastors and their flocks. About 1869, a statue of the Virgin Mary was ordered from France, and one Sunday the Blessed Mother was welcomed into the church by joyous parishioners bearing wild flowers and cultivated blossoms fresh cut from their gardens. A rectory was built in 1871. A church library was established, for the town’s public library was still in its infancy in the late nineteenth century. The church grounds were graded, and a stone wall built to encompass the property. Candles gave way to electricity. The Victorian Era brought stone urns, new altars, and a new church organ.

By the time of Father Tully’s arrival in 1920, the parish had become the central force in the spiritual and social lives of many Millbury Catholics. He oversaw the purchase of the Asa Waters Mansion as the parish’s new rectory, but his dream of building a new church near the mansion was deferred.

The Depression and World War II challenged America as never before. Once again, the parishioners of St. Brigid’s held fast to their faith and identity, and their prayers were answered.

In 1950, the creation of the new Diocese of Worcester opened a new era for the region’s Catholics. The Rev. Laurence O’Toole, who had assumed leadership of the parish in 1943, purchased the property of the late Thomas H. Sullivan on Main Street, and plans for a new church were laid.

Construction began in September 1954, and a dedication ceremony, led by Bishop John J. Wright, the diocese’s first bishop, was held on October 30, 1955.

Many who had attended the diamond anniversary Mass in the old church were present at the dedication of the new stone and slate edifice on Main Street. And while that October Sunday lies now more than 50 years in the past, it remains vivid for many parishioners who witnessed it and continue to build the parish community today.

The last half-century has been a time of upheaval and challenges for Roman Catholics, testing and deepening their faith. The Catholicism that was planted in Millbury was necessarily a parochial one, nurturing a community of believers in the midst of a society unaccustomed to Catholicism. With a new church and a rapidly growing population of Catholics in the post-war boom of the 1960s,  St. Brigid’s and American Catholicism itself marked the end of their long adolescence.

The Second Vatican Council introduced sweeping changes in the ways that American Catholics observe their liturgy, and encouraged Catholics toward better understanding of other faiths, as well as a more ecumenical spirit toward fellow Christians. Most importantly, Catholics in recent generations have found that their ascendant position in society brings a new and challenging responsibility – to spread God’s word in a society whose material wealth can too often induce a spiritual poverty.

Today, under the leadership of the Rev. Paul M. LaPalme, supported by an active diaconate and religious ministries for youth, music and religious education, St. Brigid’s Parish stands on the threshold of a new era of spiritual renewal. Restoration work has already brought welcome changes to the church’s narthex, and ambitious plans are under way in 2008 to restore the church’s full worship space to its original architectural vision.

Still, it is families and individuals – many of whom are pictured in these pages – who truly constitute the church. From the earliest days of an Irish parish lit by candles heated by coal, to today’s multi-ethnic parish whose doors are open to the world, it is upon the faith and works of its parishioners that St. Brigid’s can most surely depend. Together, they seek to build a house where all can dwell, a where “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”