Remembering an extraordinary man from the Parish of Laragh

It is difficult to truly envisage the magnitude of what Bernard Donnelly, the son of tenant farmers in pre famine Ireland achieved. The Laragh man transcended these limitations and became a student, a teacher, an engineer, a pioneer, a priest, a philanthropist and an inspiration. All this during a time when travel was to the next parish, education was literally in the hedge and hope of a better life was dangerous. Pat Maguire recalls the remarkable story of 'The Pioneer Priest' from Laragh who ministered in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, in the 19th century...

In 1845 the Santa Fe Trail was just opening and Kansas City was still a landing place on the Missouri River, where goods and passengers were discharged for the more important town of Independence. It was in this year that Fr Bernard Donnelly was appointed pastor of Independence shortly after he had been ordained priest by Bishop Kentrick of St Louis.

Fr Donnelly’s life up until then was nothing short of spectacular. He was born at a time in Ireland when education was available only to the elite. He was born in Killnacreeva in the parish of Laragh, County Cavan, during the first decade of the 19th century. His parents John Donnelly and Rose Fox were tenant farmers who made a subsistence living on 14 acres of land, leased from the estate of Captain Somerset Saunderson. He attended a hedge school, the only education available to children of the land, and was mentored by Hugh Reilly, a hedge schoolmaster in the neighbouring parish of Drung.

In the 1820s we find that he had a hedge school of his own in Laragh, with an average daily attendance of 100 pupils. Here he taught his pupils reading, writing, arithmetic and English grammar and they paid him a sum that their families could afford. He must have saved some of his earnings, as he left teaching to study engineering in Dublin, under Dr George Anderson a graduate of Oxford who had an engineering school there.

He passed from Dublin to Liverpool, where he worked as a civil engineer on the building of the Liverpool Docks. While working there, he identified himself with various Irish groups, and rescued scores of his countrymen from the clutches of the alcohol abuse.

But a great restlessness kept him moving. Bernard Donnelly sailed to the United States sometime in the early 30s, on a journey that took 80 days. He took a teaching job in Philadelphia, a city that was then, and for many years after, the stopping place in America for people from Cavan and Donegal. After a year or more, he was offered a better school in Pittsburgh with increased remuneration.

Clerical friends among the Dominican Fathers in Ohio, old friends and companions in Ireland induced him to move further west to Lancaster - at that time home to some of the oldest and wealthiest families of Ohio. While teaching in Lancaster, Bernard Donnelly recorded on the school roll that the pupil of which he was most proud was General Philip Henry Sheridan. The General’s father was born in County Cavan, a fact that Fr Donnelly never failed to mention in his reminiscent moods.

Bernard had long desired to be a priest but he would prefer to work in the prairies where the labourers were few rather than in the well-developed Ohio. On the recommendation of his friend, Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati, he was accepted for the St Louis Diocese by Bishop Kendrick, a Maynooth man. He entered the Vincentian Seminary of St Marys of the Barrens, Missouri. He had a good knowledge of Greek and Latin and of higher mathematics before entering the seminary and he was able to complete his studies in just three years. He was ordained a priest in 1845.

Fr Donnelly’s parish of Independence comprised about two thirds of the present Diocese of Kansas City, about 1600 square miles. In the diocesan paper, The Catholic Banner, he once described the mission treks on horseback that took him away from home for six weeks, travelling more than 30 miles a day through beautiful but sparsely populated prairie lands - the Catholic families living maybe twenty miles apart. On one of these trips he made friends with a Protestant preacher who invited him to his church to preach to his congregation. They listened attentively to his sermon on Christian Charity.

Buried treasure

The Civil War came in the 1860s and brought destruction and death to Missouri. The battle of Westport was in Fr Donnelly’s parish and he ministered to the fallen and wounded on both sides. He was a man respected by both sides in the conflict and people knew he could be trusted hence they lodged all their wealth with him during the war. To ensure its safety, he buried it in the cemetery. After the battle he could not find it but he repayed it all out of his own pocket, after remortgaging all the property he had.

After the Civil War the town of Kenza expanded south. An engineer and teacher by training, Fr Donnelly opened a brickyard and stone quarry on land owned by the Church. He brought hundreds of Irish labourers to pave the streets and build many of the city’s earliest structures. With his army of Irish workers, they built churches, hospitals, schools and orphanages in Kansas City. He made bricks and quarried limestone with his own hands, he had the reputation of being an excellent stone cutter.

In 1857 these labourers built a brick church at today’s 11th and Broadway Streets. This church was the centre of the town’s Catholic Diocese, until the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, still standing, was completed in 1882.

Fr Donnelly would write to family and friends in Ireland extolling the promises of the fledging town of Kansas. He had an unwavering faith in Kansas City that prompted him to write in 1880: Kansas City is likely to become one of the largest cities in the United States.

He lived a very busy life and yet he was a solitary person with few friends. He never took a holiday during the 35 years of his life in Missouri. When old age caught up with Fr Bernard Donnelly, he resigned his parish. He had disposed of the last of his property and was penniless. The Sisters of Saint Joseph took him in and cared for him in the Convent he had built for them. He resigned in January and died the following December 1880. He was buried in the crypt of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Kansas City.

“God formed man out of the dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life”

* The author, Pat Maguire, is a great grand nephew of Fr Bernard Donnelly and he travelled to Kansas as part of his research for this historical piece.