AOH Searching for Irish Stained Glass in US

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AOH Searches for Irish Stained Glass in the US

By MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press Writer

ALBANY, N.Y. - They were Irish immigrants who contributed a portion of their meager wages from digging coal and building railroads to buy hundreds of stained glass windows for Roman Catholic churches.

From about 1870 until the Depression, divisions of the Ancient Order of Hibernians donated gleaming depictions of St. Patrick and New Testament scenes to churches from Maine to California.

Now, latter-day Hibernians are trying to find and catalog these long-forgotten gifts. They are padding through old churches, hoping for the thrill of rediscovering radiant bits of history before it disappears.

"I tell folks it's kind of like finding a lost relative," said Michael Finn, a Hibernian historian from Columbus, Ohio. "You get the same kind of feeling of `Gosh, there hasn't been a Hibernian in this church in a hundred years!'"

The American Hibernians were formed in 1836 by Irish Catholic immigrants in New York City. Michael Cummings, national archivist for the lay organization, said window donations picked up after the Civil War, a time when newspaper headlines trumpeted the violent exploits of a secret society of Irish miners in Pennsylvania called the Molly Maguires.

The bloodshed reflected badly on the Irish. Hoping to improve the image of the Irish, the Hibernian redoubled their efforts to enlist chaplains. Cummings believes that this, in turn, led to the spate of window-giving.

The gifts might be forgotten still but for the efforts a few years ago to restore a Hibernian window at an old church in Ironton, Ohio. The Hibernians' national leadership became curious about other windows that might be out there. Cummings began coordinating a national search three years ago.

Detective work is done by about two dozen volunteers who identify churches where there were old Hibernian divisions. Windows in those churches are scanned for clues such as "A.O.H." inscriptions or nearby plaques.

A lot of leads come from tips. The group publicizes the search among members and in Catholic publications.

Cummings said the project became more urgent two years ago when Hibernians realized that parish consolidations and closings ? particularly in old Irish enclaves in cities ? threatened some of these windows.

"We wanted to step up what meager effort we were employing because we were afraid we would lose them," he said.

The Hibernians have already documented eight lost windows, some to natural disasters like cyclones and fire. National Hibernian President Edward McGinley calls it a race against time to find the rest.

Some discoveries are easy. Cummings found one window in his hometown of Albany. Harder to find are the windows where Hibernian divisions folded up long ago. Finn said he drives out to churches himself in areas without current divisions to go to Mass and then scout out the windows.

If he does find a Hibernian window, Finn snaps a picture and e-mails it with an attached history to Cummings. So far, the Hibernians have documented 229 existing windows in 28 states, Canada and Ireland ? more than half of them clustered in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Hibernians had more than 100,000 members nationwide at the start of the 20th century and now have about 48,000.

Cummings said the ultimate number of windows might be around double what the Hibernians have found so far.

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AOH Searching for Irish Stained Glass in US