A CONCISE HISTORY OF SAINT PATRICK'S PARISH             

Edited by Clay LaCount, Joyce Crate  and others  

    Chateaugay is the oldest of the nineteen townships which comprise Franklin County, New York, having been established in 1799 by Protestant settlers from Vermont.  Its renowned high quality farmland attracted many enterprising families willing to work the land and reap its rich harvests.  The first Catholics began filtering into the Chateaugay area in the 1820's but the nearest church was located in St. Regis, Quebec.  In 1831 Mass was held for the first time in Malone, in a private home by a visiting priest.  In 1837 Father John McNulty of St. Patrick's Church in Hogansburg finished building a small wooden church in Malone which held about 150 people.  The church was known as "St. Patrick's Congregation".  Father McNulty left Hogansburg in March of 1841 after being "jailed at Malone on slanderous charges".

    With Father McNulty's departure from the area there were no priests to provide services except for the occasional visit from priests living in St. Regis or Huntingdon, Quebec.  In 1843, Father James Keveny was appointed to Hogansburg with responsibility also for Malone and Chateaugay.  In August of 1844, he acquired properties at Chateaugay and managed to erect a small church and establish a burial ground but he had a huge territory to cover and was unable to provide regular Services at the Chateaugay church.  In the summer of 1845, he received assistance with the arrival of Father Bernard McCabe who was given charge of Malone and Chateaugay which were then officially recognized as missions of Hogansburg. By August of 1846, there were about 600 Catholic families in the Malone and Chateaugay area.  French-Canadian Catholics filtered into the area from Quebec as did many Irish Catholics who had left their homeland to escape a widespread famine.  Responsibility for the Catholics of Chateaugay remained with the Hogansburg Parish until 1848 when Chateaugay was named a mission of the newly established St. Joseph's Parish in Malone whose founding pastor became the already loved and respected Father Bernard McCabe.  St. Patrick's Church of Chateaugay was officially incorporated under his leadership on August 16th, 1848.     
    In June of 1856, Father McCabe and the people of Chateaugay faced a great calamity when a tornado swept through the area destroying the small church built under the direction of Father Keveny.  Further sorrow would come to his parishioners in less than a year and a half with Father McCabe's untimely death.  He apparently fell asleep while reading by candlelight on the evening of November 24th, 1857 at St. Joseph's Rectory in Malone.  The bed clothes caught fire and Father McCabe lost his life.  Parish records, including those for the mission at Chateaugay, were also lost in the fire.  A beautiful monument in St. Patrick's Cemetery in Chateaugay erected shortly following his death commemorates the ministry of this fine priest and relates the impact he had on the people of his mission church. Three years after the tornado destroyed the original St. Patrick's Church, construction of a new and larger church began on West Main Street in the village under the direction of Father Anthony Theves who was assigned to St. Joseph's Church in Malone with its missions in Chateaugay and Brushton following Father McCabe's death.  In 1859, the citizens of Chateaugay donated money, grain, potatoes, labor and other items to begin construction of the new church but it proved to be a time consuming enterprise with only the bare walls of the structure in place by 1863.

The year 1863 marked a major milestone in the history of St. Patrick's since in January of that year Chateaugay became an independent parish with Father Edmund DePauw appointed as its first resident pastor.  Father DePauw faced a great challenge first in the completion of the church building and in procuring adequate housing for himself and his successors; but even more importantly he faced the additional challenges of being given the pastoral charge of mission churches at Clinton, Ellenburg, Altona, Mooers, Bellmont and Burke.  In 1863 Father DePauw confirmed 150 people at one time in Chateaugay. Rev. J. Talbot Smith described what Father DePauw found in his new parish: "The people had been practically without restraint for forty years.  Their moral conduct found no guide or corrective except those which innumerable whiskey shops and unlimited dancing were able to provide.  The church itself was little better than a barn, with no pews, badly heated, and so unfinished that the snow found entrance, and the sacred wine froze in the chalice".  He described the people as "a people with little faith and low morals, spending their substance on drink, and their virtue and health in riotous living and drunkenness, spurred to attend church only by a kind of feeble self-respect which was more a tradition than a reality". Father DePauw was a great influence in the parish and won the esteem and affection of the entire community.  He was the pastor when his parish which had formerly been part of the Diocese of Albany became part of the newly established Diocese of Ogdensburg in the year 1872 and was a consultor and close friend of Bishop Edgar P. Wadhams who was the founding Bishop of the new Diocese.  In 1885, he confirmed over 500 people and heard 3,000 confessions.  He organized temperance societies and fought whiskey selling and drinking from the pulpit, in the confessional and at the ballot box.

There were 2,000 Catholics in the Chateaugay parish in May of 1889 when Father DePauw returned to his native Belgium and turned the parish over to Father Peter J. Devlin. Father DePauw left St. Patrick's Parish well on its way to a successful history.  Father Devlin served as the pastor until July of 1907 when he went to Watertown and Father Edward G. Brice became the third pastor of the parish. Father Brice served until 1914 when he left to serve at Sisters' Hospital outside Saranac Lake.  In October of 1914, Father John J. Dean became the pastor of St. Patrick's.  At about 9:00 pm on the evening of the 12th of July, 1916, a powerful summer thunder storm blew through Chateaugay.  In the course of the storm, lightning struck the bell tower of St. Patrick's and, in spite of the efforts of local firemen, the church was leveled in less than an hour by the ensuing fire.  For the second time in sixty years, the parish had lost its place of worship in a swift and violent act of nature; the parishioners were devastated.  For the next eight years, Services for the parish were held in a building that housed a skating rink on weekdays and at Sprague's Garage. 

Inflated prices caused by the First World War combined with Father Dean's relatively poor health hampered the construction of the parish's third church until 1923 when a cornerstone was laid on property purchased from Clarence Sprague about one-half mile east of the location of the second church on West Main Street.  This third church (reputed to be one of the most beautiful in Northern New York) was designed by the noted architect D.D. Keefe and its exterior structure was completed in 1924.  The first Service in the yet unfinished new church was the Midnight Mass for Christmas of that year. Father Dean died on May 31st, 1930, and Father James R. McClure was appointed the fifth pastor of the parish.  His first task was to complete the interior design of the church and to begin paying-off the massive debt incurred by the parish to complete the building project.  He served as pastor from 1930-1950 and during his twenty-year pastorate he enjoyed the help of many fine young priests who served as his assistants including the fondly remembered Father Floyd J. Brown.  During these years Mass and the Sacraments were provided for the people of Brainardsville at the Bellmont Town Hall by Father McClure's young assistants who gleaned much experience from the practice.  Father McClure also supervised the renovation of the former Sprague home (which was immediately adjacent to the new church) into an adequate parish rectory for himself and his assistants.  With Father McClure's transfer to St. Bernard's in Saranac Lake in 1950, one of the longest pastorates in the parish's history came to an end and was followed by a series of much shorter pastorates during the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's.

During the 50's and 60's the parish was lead by such notable pastors as Father Edgar Gallagher, Father Ambrose Hyland (a native of the parish who is famous for his pioneering work in prison ministry at Dannemora), Father Donald Gallagher, Monsignor Joseph Lucker and Father Harold Skelly.  Like Father McClure before them, they had the support of many fine young assistant pastors who shared their labors and lightened their pastoral burdens during these decades.  The Dominican Sisters of Fall River, Massachusetts, were invited to establish a convent in the parish on Depot Street and worked hard in the catechetical field both in Chateaugay and its environs.  A major historical development in the life of the parish occurred in 1959 when St. Jude's Mission Church in Brainardsville was purchased and the parishioners who lived in the southern end of the parish on and around the shores of the scenic Chateaugay Lakes were provided with their own place of worship rather than having to gather each week in the Bellmont Town Hall.  The massive basement under St. Patrick's Church was renovated into a splendid parish center during these years with five classrooms, two kitchens, restrooms and a large meeting room.  With the challenging mandate to implement the decrees of the Second Vatican Council; the pastors, their assistants and the "good sisters" tried to lead the people of Sts. Patrick and Jude into a new era in the life of the church and their local community. During the 70's and 80's major changes occurred in the parish with a substantial decline in population due largely to a steady drop in the number of family farms in the area. Furthermore, with the declining number of priests and religious the parish no longer enjoyed the presence of young assistant pastors and the Dominican Sisters had closed their convent. 

The role of the laity began to blossom during these years, however, and the pastors relied very heavily upon the hard working people of Chateaugay and Brainardsville to "pick-up the slack" caused by the loss of the assistant pastors and the closing of the convent.  The pastors during these decades were Father Peter Ward, Father Lawrence Brady, Father William Muench, Father Arthur LaBaff, Father Paul Whitmore and arriving on the scene in 1988 was the sixteenth and current pastor of St. Patrick's Parish: Father Fay W. Ager.  The 70's and 80's saw the establishment of the liturgical ministries of Reader and Eucharistic Minister as well as the formation of a Pastoral Council, Finance Council and a pastoral outreach team.  During these decades, some Ursuline Sisters from Malone have accepted the challenge of serving as pastoral associates and have helped to keep alive the inspiring presence of dedicated women religious in the parish begun by the Dominican Sisters a generation earlier.  Sister Teresa Byrne, Sister Anne Walsh, Sister Jane Mennis and Sister Mary Hallahan have filled this position over the years and their hard work has been of great benefit to the pastors, staff and people of the parish in innumerable ways.  Several Ursuline Sisters from Malone have also helped during these years in the christian formation program and related activities in the parish.  St. Patrick's Church  underwent a massive renovation project updating its worship space  under the guidance of Father LaBaff in 1979; and in 1986 under the guidance of Father Whitmore another major project focused on saving the church spire and preserving the edifice's northern facade.

With the start of the last decade of the twentieth century, the parish  has tried to accomodate itself to the special needs and demands of this unique time in the history of the church, the world and this local community.  Under the guidance of Father Ager and his most generous  and dedicated staff, the 1990's have thusfar been a time of broadening lay involvement and lay leadership in the parish as well as a time of  preserving and updating increasingly aging parochial facilities.  During Father Ager's pastorate, an RCIA Team and Evangelization Group have been established to deepen faith-sharing in the community.  In the mid 90's, the parish made great strides in the use of modern communications to help share the story of our faith through the internet by establishing a parish website.   In 1994, the first two parishioners from Sts. Patrick and Jude were commissioned by the Diocese of Ogdensburg as Lay Ministers specializing in adult faith facilitation and in 1997 two more parishioners were likewise commissioned by the diocese as Lay Ministers specializing in youth ministry.  In fact, concern about the increased pressures placed on youth today and a desire to expand youth ministry programs in the parish have been important priorities during these years. 

In this regard, the pastoral staff was augmented in 1994 with the hiring of the parish's first Youth Minister, Brian T. Dwyer, a native of the parish whose energy and enthusiasm amaze even the  young people he serves.  The 90's have also seen major improvements made to both the parish rectory and parish center, as well as renovations to the two churches and a needed expansion of the parish cemetery.  Attempts to keep the aging parochial properties safe, attractive and practical remain a constant struggle for the pastor, staff and advisory councils.  The rich history and tradition of this faith community as well as the generosity and hard work of the current parishioners of Sts. Patrick and Jude would lead any objective observer to only one logical conclusion: for this parish "the best is yet to come" in terms of its people, programs and facilities.