The year 1993 marked the centennial of the building of St. Patrick's Shrine Church in Carlisle. Just as the Rev. Dr. Henry G. Ganss published a comprehensive history of the parish in 1895, so it was deemed appropriate to prepare a brief history of the present church and its people during the last century.1
Catholicism was represented at the founding of Carlisle in 1751 by a few individuals such as Philip Pendergrass, his father-in-law John Hastings, and Felix Doyle. In 1757, when the Rev. Mr. Robert Harding, S.J., rector of St. Joseph's church in Philadelphia, conducted a survey of Catholics in Pennsylvania above the age of 12, Cumberland County was listed as having six men and six women of that faith.2 For the next 60 years this tiny Carlisle Catholic community was served by missionary priests from the Conewago church (now the basilica of the Sacred Heart) in Heidelberg township, York (now Adams) County.
William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania provided that all religious groups should be tolerated in his colony, and this principle remained inviolate after his death in 1718, when his widow and sons succeeded to the Proprietorship. Although the Penns, their lieutenant governors, and most citizens were tolerant of Roman Catholics and their church, they were suspicious that the church might be allied with Britain's enemies, especially the French during the intercolonial wars. Perhaps such latent fears explain why, when the Rev. Mr. Charles Sewall, S. J., purchased from Robert Guthrie the lot in the second block of Pomfret Street where the present Shrine Church and cemetery are located, the deed did not identify Sewall as a priest or indicate that the ground was acquired for a religious use. Five years after the lot was purchased, a log building was erected on the site in 1784. Known locally as the "mass-house", it stood until 1806, when a modest brick church, measuring 40 by 35 feet, replaced it. This building was enlarged and remodeled in the 1830s and 1840s; it stood until 1893, when the existing edifice on East Pomfret Street was erected.
Families of diverse nationalities—Irish, English, and German—have dedicated their lives to this Carlisle parish and surrounding community. For example, members of the earliest families served in the Revolutionary War; remains of their grave markers may be seen in the old Pomfret Street cemetery-Pendergrass, Quigley, Faust, Lechler, McManus, and Swartz.3 The economic history of Carlisle also records a range of parishioners, from professional men and capitalists to farmers, inn-keepers, and laborers. In the early nineteenth century still other families entered the town and church- Faller, McGuire, Sheafer, Eckert, Schumpp, Dawson, and Smith. A few of the families that arrived in mid-century were here to greet the church's first resident pastor, Louis J. McKenna- Miles, Dorner, Yeager, Linnekuhl, Herman, Diffely, and Farabelli. Members of these families, as well as of the older ones, witnessed the formation in 1879 of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, whose presence was to have a significant bearing on the local and national identity of the St. Patrick parish. The procession of members of the church continues to the present time; all can record events, have their memories, and cherish lore of Fathers Ganss, Welsh, Schmidt, and Yeager.
When the church on East Pomfret Street was built in 1893, the parish roster listed members of the following families, whose names reveal the increasingly varied origins of the parishioners: Beetem, Brennan, Berger, Byrne, Chaney, Corcoran, Davis, Diffely, Donovan, Dorner, Dougherty, Eckert, Fachler, Faller, Farabelli, Faust, Fletcher, Gallagher, Gibson, Gilmer, Gottsworth, Harris, Hatton, Hecker, Herman, Hoffman, Huntt, Jackson, Klein, Lehman, Lewis, Linnekuhl, Meek, McCullough, McSorley, Miles, Mulgrew, Myers, Norman, Parker, Phillips, Pollinger, Schrom, Sheafer, Shumpp, Smith, Stanton, Thayer, Thomas, Thurston, Weakley, Yates, and Yeager.4 Most of the individuals and families in this list made contributions to the new structure either in the form of money or of memorials.
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