175th Anniversary Celebration

Gracious God, as we celebrate our past and rejoice in our present, we also look with eager eyes to the future. We thank You for all our blessings!

1847: Founding of St. Mary Parish—Stony Hill By the middle of the 19th century, the Catholic community in Watchung had grown to where it was recognized as a parish by Bishop John (“Dagger John”) Hughes, Bishop of New York. In the fall of 1847, Father John Raffeiner, serving in Brooklyn, was assigned by Bishop Hughes to minister to the spiritual needs of St. Mary’s Parish one Sunday a month. On October 17th, Fr. Raffeiner administered the Sacrament of Baptism to Bartholomew Wormzer, the first in the long history of the parish. By the end of the year, the cornerstone of the first parish church had been laid. Also before the year was out, responsibility for St. Mary’s was given over to the care of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorist Fathers).

What else was happening in 1847? James K. Polk was the eleventh president of the United States; there were 29 states in the Union; Pope Pius IX was in the second year of the longest pontificate in Church history (32 years); the United States was at war with Mexico; the first US Postage stamps were issued: 5¢ (Benjamin Franklin) and 10¢ (George Washington); the American Medical Association was organized in Philadelphia. Some people who were born this year: Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Jesse James, Joseph Pulitzer and Bram Stoker (Dracula).