Excerpt from Conewago: A Collection of Catholic Local History; Gathered From the Fields of Catholic Missionary Labor Within Our Reach

The Church has reason to rejoice, that Catholics are awakening to the justice and importance of reclaiming and preserving the early history and records of the religion of their fathers. Want, intolerance and persecution drove them from their native land. They came into a strange and un settled country, -cast adrift in the Indian wilds of America, without homes, Without a church or a government, and with out anything necessary to life and happiness.

This generation, with all the grandeur and perfection of its civilization, can never fully understand nor in the least appreciate the sufferings and struggles of those who cleared our fields and built our homes. The enjoyments and com forts we now possess, are ours only by inheritance as the fruits of their labors.

By the sweat of their brow and the valor of their arm, grew this mighty religious and social fabric, - the Church to teach, to bless and to save, - the State to guard and protect.

Before a settlement had been formed or a law enacted, the Church was here. Before a Calvert or a Penn had been granted a charter, the Jesuits watered the forests primeval with their blood. They planted the Cross and offered up the Holy Sacrifice, that soon there might be labor in the desert wastes before them. Others came, and in many a lowly Wigwam and humble Mass-house were heard the praises of God, in the celebration of the divine mysteries of the altar. Follow the names in history or geography, - from the St. Lawrence to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, from Maine' to Florida, - at every step there is some living evi dence of the Catholic Church. Time and its changes can never obliterate them. Their impress is indelibly blended on every monument of greatness, on every work of genius; in the laws and institutions of the country, in the lives of millions of its inhabitants in the memory of millions more.

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