Extract from “Parochial Records” – Diocese of Clogher” by Rev. J.E. McKenna, P.P.,

Of the many distinguished Ecclesiastics given by this parish of Clogher to the service of God’s Church, none holds a warmer place in the affections of the people than Archbishop Hughes. The family from which he sprang had lived for generations in the adjoining parish of Errigal-Truagh. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the grandfather of the subject of this article held a rented, very unproductive farm, in the townland of Durless Dhu, beside the far-famed Glen of Altadavan. About that time he and his brother Phelim, who was joint tenant with him, removed to a scarcely superior farm in Dernaved, in the County of Monaghan, but bordering on Tyrone. His two sons, Patrick and Michael Hughes, towards the end of that century, finding the Dernaved farm unequal to their requirements, rented, co-jointly, a fine farm in the townland of Annaloghan, about a mile from Augher, and convenient to where the parish and Diocese of Clogher border upon the parish of Errigal-Keerogue, in the Diocese of Armagh. Soon after the purchase of this farm, Patrick Hughes married Margaret McKenna of Bracagh. Her sister had already married James McKenna of Cavanmoutray, and her brother Hugh had come to reside in Altnaveagh, midway between Dernaved and Annaloghan. The marriage was blessed by seven children, Michael, Patrick, John, Mary, Peter, Ellen and Margaret. Mary and Peter died in childhood and were interred in the family burial ground at Errigal-Truagh.

We have been led to particularise thus minutely the birthplace of the future Archbishop by the repeated attempts that have been made to rob this parish of the honour of having given the New World one of its greatest ecclesiastics and statesmen. Perhaps the most glaring and certainly the most contemptible of these attempts was that perpetrated in an American city about the year 1895, when a meeting was held “to raise funds for the erection of a memorial to Archbishop Hughes, in his native town Omagh, Co. Tyrone”. The Rev. Joseph Rapmund, C.C., Clogher, at once exposed this mis-statement in the home and American newspapers, yet we have seen it repeated. A misstatement with a motive which succeeds in attaining its object has need of frequent contradiction.

John Hughes, the third son of Patrick Hughes and Margaret McKenna, was born in Annaloghan on St. John’s Eve, and was baptised on the Feast of St. John the Baptist – 24th June 1797, at the Fort, where St. Macarten’s Church now stands. The Feast of St. John was then a Holyday of Obligation. There were three children for baptism after Mass. The officiating priest, enquired if there were already a John in the families that sent these three children: and learned that Patrick Hughes, alone of the three fathers, had not a John. He announced that he would call the child John, although the sponsors declared that they were instructed to have it baptised Owen. The sponsors were Felix Sherry, of Clonesboyle, Errigal-Truagh and Rose McCann, who subsequently married a man, named Collins and immigrated to Providence, Rhode Island.

The early education, particularly the religious education, of John Hughes largely depended on what he acquired from his mother, who was an intensely religious woman of refined tastes, and who devoted much care and attention to the religious training of her children. His father, too, appears to have got, for that time, a fairly liberal education. In a poem which he wrote on the occasion of his leaving Annaloghan to return to Dernaved and which he entitled “The Truagh Woods so Green” we have evidence not only of a mastery of English, but also of acquaintance with the classics.  The last Dean O’Connor has preserved this poem, which he took down verbatim from James (Hugh) McKenna, Altnaveagh, in the year 1870.

Patrick Hughes and part of his family went to reside in Dernaved, while his wife and the remaining members of the family looked after “the home place”. John Hughes had been attending a hedge school, near Augher, but after the removal to Dernaved, he was sent to Master Scott, a convert, who taught in Mullyoden Chapel on weekdays, and served Mass there on Sundays. Scott was succeeded by Master Pat Connolly, Dean O’Connor in 1886 got the following account of Mullyoden Chapel School from an old man who had been a pupil of Scott and Pat Connolly:

“Clara Chapel was built the same year as Garvey Castle. School was taught in the chapel aisle. Cummings, of Derrygorry, made long seats arranged round the walls of the aisle, for the scholars on weekdays and for the congregation on Sundays. Father McDermott put the school out of the chapel, and built a schoolroom with lean-to roof up against the chapel; the under-part to serve as a school and the upper as a sacristy”.

When his father, who was an extremely practical man, found John Hughes dipping into the classics, he concluded that it was time to prepare him for the battle of life, which for the poor tenant farmers and their families was then growing, daily, more strenuous, and he determined to apprentice him to Roger Toland, the gardener at Favour Royal. Little did the father imagine that in the way of Divine Providence, his son, even in Favour Royal gardens, was equipping himself for admission, some years later, into Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, as a candidate for the priesthood, and that his apprenticeship as a gardener, was the one experience of his life which at the critical moment, could have secured that admission.

John Hughes was then sixteen years of age. He is described as, of a lively disposition, but remarkably well behaved. He was fond of frequenting social gatherings and took part in the amusements and pastimes of his associates. He was much devoted to athletic sports and could out-distance most of his companions at running or jumping competitions. At story-telling – in those days a fruitful source of amusement – he was proficient, and was also a good singer. From his mother, who had a singularly sweet voice, he inherited the gift of music, which his talent for versifying is distinctly traceable to his father.

He spent two years apprenticeship to the old gardener. His brother Patrick worked in their father’s house, as a hand-loom weaver, and his brother Michael attended to the labour of the farm. The times were bad; the shadow of the terrible famine of 1817 was already darkening the land. Patrick Hughes, senior, determined to emigrate. In 1816, he and his second son, Patrick, went to America, where on the advice of the father of President Bucannon, whom they had known in Ireland, they determined to settle at Chambersburgh in Pennsylvania. In May of the following year, John Hughes left Ireland to join his father and brother. Meantime Mrs Hughes had been making preparations to follow her husband and two sons. The difficulty of disposing of the two farms to advantage, the purpose for which she was left behind, detained her. She succeeded in the end and left Ireland with the remaining members of the family. They were all reunited in their distant home in August 1818. Patrick Hughes, ever mindful of the old land, named his new home in Chambersburgh “New Truagh”.

John Hughes worked for some years as a farm labourer and at times as a surface man on the roads, but his mind was on other things. Near his new home was the Seminary of Mount St. Mary, Emmitsburgh. Its President, the Rev. Dr. Dubois, had many applications from the young labourer for admission to its halls, and was reluctantly compelled to tell him again and again that there was no vacancy. In the winter of 1819, he had to say again “there is no vacancy” – but he added – “except in the garden”. It was an angel that spoke. John Hughes’s reply came promptly. “I know something about gardening, and I will take that job”. On the 10th November 1819, he was admitted to the Seminary on the understanding that he should look after the College garden and in return receive his board and education. It is only in democratic America that such educational practices of the Ages of faith have been revived. Such satisfaction did he give in his new sphere, that, in less than a year he was relieved of his gardening responsibilities and allowed to devote all his time to study. His College career was an exceptionally brilliant one. Having in due course received Minor Orders, Sub-deaconship and Deaconship. In 1825, he was ordained priest by the Most Rev. Dr. Conwell, in St. Joseph’s Church, Philadelphia on the Feast of St. Teresa, 15th October 1826.

Father Hughes’s life as a missionary priest in Philadelphia was one of extra-ordinary activity. His zeal, his ardour, his compelling eloquence soon made him the cynosure of every Catholic in the city. His polemical controversy with Dr. Brakenridge the aggressive champion of the Presbyterian body brought him into prominence throughout the State.

Dr. Dubois, who had admitted him as gardening student to Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, now Bishop of New York, was in need of an assistant, and on the 11th January, 1838, Father John Hughes was consecrated Bishop of Basi Copolis in partibus infidelium, and co-adjutor to Bishop Dubois. In his new sphere the young bishop had a wide field for his zeal and energy. Catholics had but a poor standing in the States at that time and ignorant bigots in positions of influence were determined to keep them in servitude. A wave of anti-Catholic feeling, fanned by the infamous “Know-Nothing Society”, was passing over the country, about the time of his advancement to the episcopate, and manifesting itself in the wrecking of Catholic Churches, the boycotting and waylaying of Irish Catholics in various districts. Dr. Hughes at once entered the lists in defence of his countrymen and co-religionists and in a short time his adversaries retired from the fray humbled and beaten. The question of education next engaged his attention. It was then, as it is still, a burning question in the States. Till the end of his life, Dr. Hughes fought strenuously and successfully for the principle of Catholic education.

On the 3rd October 1850, he was elevated by the Pope to the dignity of first Archbishop of New York and on the 3rd April, following the PALLIUM was conferred on him by the Holy Father. One of his biographers writes of him: “Archbishop Hughes was a self-made man. He rose by the sheer strength of character and natural genius from the lowest to the highest rank. Everything was against him when he landed on our shores: his race and religion were despised, he had very little education, no money and no powerful friends. He began as a day labourer in the fields and on the roadside. Almost without friends, he succeeded. His piety led him into the Sanctuary; but if he had not become a priest, there was material in him to make a great General, a great lawyer, a great politician or a great statesman.

The Government of the United States was not slow to appreciate his influence and his transcendant ability. While assisting at the Council of Baltimore, in May 1846, he received a communication from Mr. Bucannan, Secretary of State, inviting him to Washington to confer with the government “on public affairs of importance”. He was about this time offered a special mission, as peace envoy, to Mexico, with which the United States had been at war. This honour, for reasons not recorded, he declined. At a later period and in a moment of supreme crisis, during the war – North with South – in October 1861, the State, relying on his integrity and ability, appealed to him through the President, to undertake a confidential mission to the Courts of England and France. He loyally undertook this mission, regarding it as a duty that he owed to his adopted country, and set out in the following month to discharge it.

Bishop, afterwards Cardinal McClusky, his life-long friend, gives us in a few sentences of the funeral oration on Archbishop Hughes, the key to his marvellous success in all his undertakings. “There was one trait that distinguished the Archbishop most particularly.  It was his singular force and clearness and vigour of intellect, his strength of will and firmness of resolution. He was a stranger to fear. His heart was full of undaunted courage. In the presence of dangers and difficulties, his energies only seemed to be roused to greater strength and higher exertion. He never quailed before the presence of any difficulty, danger or trial. Not that he trusted wholly and solely on himself. He trusted in his cause and he trusted in God, to whose service he had pledged himself and devoted his entire being”.

The Repeal Movement, under the leadership of O’Connell, was at its height on the occasion of a few of Dr. Hughes’s visits to his native country. He took a keen interest in it and gave it very practical support. One sentence from a letter written by him from Liverpool, to his friend, the Rev. Charles McDermott, P.P. Errigal-Truagh, on the 19th September 1845, shows in the light of more recent events, how thoroughly his keen mind grasped the situation: “Is there a settled plan for carrying the question according to things which are in existence? If so, are the people united and determined to meet and make the sacrifice which it may cost? Are they in earnest when they say they are prepared to give their lives for the cause in which they are engaged? If their enemies believed that in the hour of trial, they would prove by their deed what they say, I believe that repeal would be carried without a struggle”.

Through all his struggles and successes, he never forgot that he was an Irishman. His voice, his pen, his purse, and his great influence were always at the service of his countrymen. We shall allow one instance to speak for many. When the news reached New York that an insurrection had broken out in Ireland, the fact of the outbreak had, alone been reported. The chances of its failure or success were unknown in America. In these circumstances, a meeting of the Irishmen of New York was held to consider how they could best assist their countrymen. Archbishop Hughes, who always had the courage of his convictions, attended the meeting. In the introduction to his historic address, he said: “There may be a crisis in the history of a nation which will authorise and almost require a man in my station to depart from what may be considered the ordinary and legitimate routine of his official duties. I think that such a crisis and such a period has arisen in the history of Ireland. By the last news, it appears that the oppressor and the victim stand face to face. The same news that brought us this intelligence taught us also that the oppressor had the weapon of destruction already lifted but as to the defence, as to the means of defence on the part of the victim, the news said nothing. This then is a solemn period in the history of the Irish people. This is not a mere passing feeling or passion, but it is a momentous question for liberty for Ireland, for humanity. Liberty, Ireland, humanity are at stake; and if liberty, Ireland and humanity have friends on this side of the ocean, now is the time for them to stand forward. I come among you, gentlemen, not as an advocate of war. It would ill accord with my profession. I come not as a disturber of the peace of nations. My office is properly, to be a peacemaker when it is possible, but I come in the name of what is dearer, in the name of Sacred Humanity; and I come to offer my feeble might between the executioner and his victim. I come, not, if you will, to put arms in the hands of men that they may destroy the lives of others, but I come to give my voice and my might to shield the unfortunate bosom of the sons of Ireland. It is not for me to say anything to excite your feelings when, as you perceive, I can scarce repress my own. The crisis is pending. It is not by multitudinous assemblies alone, it is by the force of the soul – that spirit of sacrifice which makes the cause of men who are energetic, and are in earnest, that you may, even from these remote shores, from this hall, aid the cause of your beloved Ireland”.

Dr Hughes was pre-eminently a great Churchman in his many-sided activities; the cause of religion always got the first place. He laid the foundations of the Catholic Church in America, broad, solid and secure. As we have said, Catholic education held a prominent place in his life-work. He built many colleges for the higher education of Catholic youth, and for the training of his ecclesiastics, for example Lafargeville Seminary, St. John’s College, Fordham and Troy College. He brought out and educated for the priesthood numberless youths from the levitical families of Errigal Truagh, and staffed his diocese with a brilliant and energetic priesthood. Orphanages and other charitable institutions, religious houses, monasteries, convents, schools, presbyteries, multiplied during his episcopate as if they had been call into existence under the wand of a magician. Writing to Dr. McNally, Bishop of Clogher, of whom he always spoke as “Our Bishop”, in May 1858, he speaks of the number of churches founded during his episcopate. “This is the ninety-ninth church that has been erected and dedicated under my personal guidance and responsibility since the period of my appointment as Bishop of New York”.

In 1858, he laid the foundation stone of the Great Cathedral of St. Patrick’s, Mott Street, New York, one of the most magnificent modern churches of the world and fitting memorial of America’s greatest Archbishop. It is truly lamentable to see, in the official History of the Cathedral, published in New York 1908, the extent to which Archbishop Hughes’s brilliant work is obscured in the attempt to magnify some of those to whom was assigned the comparatively easy task of completing the work.   Eugene Kelly, the famous New York banker, a native of the parish of Kilskeery, was one of the greatest benefactors of this Cathedral, as he was of every deserving Catholic charity of his time. His family have built and furnished the Lady Chapel, at their sole cost.

Pope Pius, exiled in 1848, and again threatened with exile in 1860, had, throughout the Catholic world no more able or outspoken champion than Archbishop Hughes whose patriotic statesmanship had already won the sympathy and confidence of leaders of thought in America. His writings, in defence of the Rights of the Holy See, were translated into several European languages, and produced a profound impression. In 1860, he forwarded to the Pope, as an offering from his diocese, 53,000 dollars.

This truly great Archbishop died in New York, on the 3rd January 1864, and his remains were finally laid to rest in the vaults of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on the 30th January 188-, whither they were transferred from old St. Patrick’s. Some of the most prominent statesmen in America freely acknowledged that no man of his time exercised more extensive and more beneficial influence on the public life of the country; and the impartial historian of the Church in the United States must admit that it was Archbishop Hughes, who in stormy and troubled times laid the foundation of Catholic prosperity in that country. We are frequently reminded of the wonderful Providence of God, in scattering the faithful Irish Catholics in the famine years to plant the faith so securely in many corners of the world, and while we rejoice in the result we cannot but deplore the oppression and misgovernment which robbed Ireland of the service of many pre-eminent statesmen and leaders, among whom Archbishop Hughes will ever hold a conspicuous place.

In his native Diocese, with which he always remained in close touch, the announcement of the Archbishop’s death caused profound sorrow. His dear and life-long friend, Dr. McNally, on hearing of it issued the following circular to his priests: “Bishop’s House, Monaghan, 19th January 1864. Rev. Dear Sir – The death of the Most Rev. Dr. Hughes, the great Archbishop of New York, will be everywhere felt as a loss to the whole Catholic Church; but his Lordship having been a native of this diocese, with which he always kept up the most intimate connection, and born in the very parish of Clogher itself, the loss is truly a domestic one. We therefore appoint Wednesday the 3rd February next, for the Month’s Mind, at which we wish all the clergy of the Diocese to assist and as many of the laity as can conveniently at the old Parish Church, Monaghan. On the day mentioned the Solemn Office and Mass for the Dead will commence at ten o’clock. I remain, Dear Rev. Sir, Yours faithfully, + C. McNALLY.”

The Solemn Office and Requiem Mass were assisted at by practically all the priests of the diocese, and a vast concourse of the laity. At the termination of the Absolution, the Very Rev. Dr. Birmingham, P.P., Muckno, preached an eloquent panegyric on the deceased prelate.

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Through the exertions of Owen Murray, of Chicago, a Truagh man, the beautiful series of stained-glass windows depicting the life and death of St. John the Baptist, which adorn the Baptistry in St. Macarten’s Cathedral were erected as a memorial to Archbishop Hughes.