The Catholic Community in Poughkeepsie 1870-1900: The Period of Testing Louis C. Zuccarello
T
he funeral procession that moved ". . . up Mill Street to Bridge, thence to Mansion and through the latter street to the Catholic cemetery on the Salt Point Road. . ."1 carried Father Michael Riordan to his final resting place. The funeral services held on Friday, June 17, 1870 were evidence that the Catholic community in Poughkeepsie had come of age. Fr. Riordan was largely responsible for that. As the Mass at St. Peter's began at 11 a.m., the Poughkeepsie Eagle report noted, . . . the edifice was densely packed with human beings, among whom were a large number of our most prominent citizens. All the aisles were uncomfortably filled and the galleries were strained to the utmost, while at the same time crowds of people remained outside — the seats on either side of the middle aisle were occupied almost exclusively by St. Peter's T.A.B. Society and St. Peter's Juvenile Society, the members of the T.A.B. taking particular pains to usher strangers to seats.2
Even as Riordan's death focused attention on the Catholic community's gradual but successful integration into the fabric of Poughkeepsie life, it briefly cloaked issues that would continue to challenge both Poughkeepsie Catholics and their neighbors in the years after 1870. Would Catholics ever be regarded as fully American? How would Catholics relate to each other — given their ethnic diversity and increasingly dissimilar socio-economic status? How would they surmount divisions of language and culture and of clergy and laity? How and by whom would Catholic youngsters be educated? These were some of the key questions that would test Poughkeepsie Catholics. Fr. Riordan had come to Poughkeepsie in 1844. He was a young priest, approximately thirty years old, who came to a poor parish, beset by squabbling factions and an uncertain future. His predecessor, Fr. Burke, had warned the community that if they were unable to support a full-time priest, he might be sent elsewhere .3 Now at his death, Fr. Riordan's work could be recognized. He had stabilized the parish and had healed animosities which he had found both within and outside his own parish community. In addition to his labors in Poughkeepsie, Riordan served Catholics throughout the county of Dutchess journeying east to Dover Plains, Millbrook and Amenia and north to Hyde Park and Rhinebeck. Louis C. Zuccarello is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Core/Liberal Studies Program at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. This work is his third in a series of papers studying Poughkeepsie Catholics and issues of religious and ethnic pluralism. 105
