On This Date in Beacon's History: August 18, 1861

Dedication of St. Joachim's Church by the Archbishop John Hughes

Imagine the excited stirrings among the Irish American community of Matteawan and Fishkill Landing as they prepared to go to Mass on that Sunday morning of August 18, 1861, the day when “Dagger John” Hughes, Archbishop of New York, came here to officiate over the dedication of the new St. Joachim’s Church in Matteawan. By that time (1861) Dagger John (so nicknamed for the dagger-like cross he put before his signed name and for his battling temperament on behalf of his Irish kinsmen) was a national figure of prominence revered by the Irish immigrants of his diocese and respected by many others for his moral stands against slavery and against the pervasive Nativist sentiment toward immigrants. The Irish then were considered a criminal class of alcoholics and moral degenerates, over running the country (and our twin villages) after the potato famines and subsequent mass immigrations to America. Locally, this new Roman Catholic Church of St. Joachim’s would be an edifice of hope and pride for our newest immigrants (and later, other Catholic immigrants to come), built with the contributions from the small wages of laborers and house servants. The Catholic weekly newspaper, The New York Tablet, in its August 31, 1861 issue, wrote the following about the new St. Joachim’s Church and its congregation:

The Matteawan parish has not 100 families; it has no rich patrons. Its members are almost exclusively Irish, and when the fact that their establishment is now worth over $1600 is viewed impartially, it proclaims the value of what is sometimes appropriately said of the Celtic Mission in the designs of Providence over this religious people.