Two fires would be enough to discourage lesser churches, let alone men, but the mystery of the rectory fires fueled Baptist suspicions that there wasn’t room enough in a small town for two very opinionated groups of religious people.
No one accused good Christian people of arson, but good Christian people weren’t particularly upset at the rectory fires.
And the only thing more opinionated than priests and pastors are nuns and pastors’ wives. When nuns came to town to teach in a new Catholic school and convent built for them on Catlin Street, the Baptist pastor’s wife complained about, The harem.
It was vindication for the pastor’s wife when a glorious start of forty students diminished steadily until the school and convent closed in less than twenty years, and when the building was just plain torn down a few years later there were a few Baptists in the crowd of onlookers.
Animosity between Catholics and folks in Elizabeth wasn’t limited to the Baptists. Folks didn’t want St. Mary’s to acquire the land for a cemetery, on a hilltop, with a nice view and who needs a nice view if you’re dead and buried.
But since it wasn’t farmable land it was alright because being practical was before cleanliness right behind godliness. The first person buried in the newly consecrated ground was a young girl named Catherine Wand, Andrew and Emma’s beautiful eighteen-year-old daughter.
Father Ruetershoff said a sad mass and the only comfort of that day was the almost proud processional out the church doors, a short walk down the street to a plot of newly cleared land, without even a proper gate or sign to say that it was St. Mary’s Cemetery.
James Callahan 