A Parish Is Born
In 1668, Joseph Carpenter and a few
associates purchased a large tract of land on the North Shore of Long Island
from the Matinecock Indians. This area remained a quiet, rural settlement until
a post-Civil War religious fervor showed itself along the Atlantic seaboard. In
1871, a group of Methodist’s from Manhattan and Brooklyn organized the Grand
Metropolitan Camp Ground Association and bought 147 acres of property from the
heirs of Joseph Carpenter. Over the next three decades, religious summer camp
meetings and crowds of visitors transformed the area into a bustling resort
town, complete with hotels, a ferry service, steamboat cruises and lovely
Victorian homes. It was during this time of growth, on October 3, 1883, that Sea
Cliff became an incorporated village composed of thirteen families and the
pastor of the Methodist Church. As the village continued to grow, more Catholic
families settled in the area. On July 18, 1897, the first Catholic services were
held in the Old Chapel on 14th Avenue, just west of Central Avenue, where
visiting clergymen came to Sea Cliff to conduct camp meetings. Father James
McEnroe presided and was assisted by Father Frederick Lund. Throughout the
following year the pair continued to travel from Glen Cove to say mass at the
mission until plans for a new parish were realized.
(click photo to enlarge)
In 1898, Bishop Charles E. McDonnell, the
second Bishop of the Brooklyn Diocese, formed a new parish in Sea Cliff that he
named St. Boniface Martyr, and appointed Father James J. Donohoe as first
pastor. Father Donohoe celebrated his first Mass on July 3, 1898 in the Old
Chapel. The Sea Cliff News of July 9,
1898 correctly predicted: “As Father Donohoe is a hustler, it will not be long
before a handsome new church will be erected.” They broke ground for the
edifice on January 11, 1899, and volunteers (including many non-Catholics)
carted bricks and fieldstone from the Glenwood Landing dock and from the Long
Island Railroad station in Glen Head. On June 11, 1899, the cornerstone for the
church building was laid.
(click photo to enlarge)
As the church was being erected, the work of
building the parish also proceeded. Father Donohoe set up a Sunday School and
organized a Junior Choir, formed an Apostleship of Prayer, arranged for a
mission, got the Holy Name Society underway, organized the St. Aloysius and Holy
Angels Sodalities, took the first census, celebrated the first confirmation, and
trained the first altar boys. He set up the St. Boniface Guards for youth aged 9
through 15. He bought an old boarding house, turned it into a rectory, and held
a special collection to furnish it. Instead of charging pew rent, as was the
custom, an “admission fee” of ten cents was taken at the door as one entered
for mass.
(click photo to enlarge)
The social life of the church blossomed, all
with the point of fund-raising. A news account of the time tells of “lectures,
balls, stereopticon views, picnics, minstrel shows, fairs (one in 1897 netted
$1200), concerts, lawn parties, open-air dancing, euchre (card) parties and
suppers...”.
The moment the basement of the church was
completed, Father Donohoe again appealed for the parishioners to harness their
horse teams to carry chairs, benches and an altar to the site, where mass was
celebrated on July 9, 1899. The completed church building was dedicated by
Bishop Charles E. McDonnell, D.D., on April 22, 1900.
A Temperance Society was begun in April 1901
and lasted for only five years (records indicate a yearly decrease in numbers).
In 1902, the first St. Patrick’s Day Supper was served, and netted $142.40. It
soon became the parish event of the year, attracting people from the whole
Oyster Bay peninsula. Its eat-all-you-like meal, prepared and served by the
Ladies Guild in an atmosphere of carefree joy, was finally discontinued in the
1950’s for lack of ability to handle the crowds.
Father Donohoe was transferred in 1906 to
St. Martin of Tours in Brooklyn, and Reverend William L. O’Hara became the
second pastor at St. Boniface Martyr (1906-1909). He early became known for his
civic interest, his instruction of non-Catholics, and his generosity. In June of
1906, he gave the commencement address at the Sea Cliff High School graduation
exercises. It was he who urged his parishioners and others in Sea Cliff to send
money to aid those suffering from the San Francisco earthquake and, later, to
collect for victims of an earthquake in Italy.
The pastor who followed Reverend O’Hara
was by disposition apparently something of a local John XXIII (before his time).
The Rev. Louis J. Sloane, who served until 1926, managed to pay off the church
debt and began the dream of a parochial school. To this end, he started to build
a treasury. Father Sloane was known for his great charity toward all people. He
was well liked by non-Catholics in town and made many converts. When Father
Sloane was suffering from his last illness, public prayers for his recovery were
said in all the Protestant churches in Sea Cliff and in the Jewish Synagogues in
Glen Cove. During the last two years of Father Sloane’s pastorate, Reverend
Aloysius H. Gillick and Reverend William Rhatigan served as administrators.
A new church bell was blessed on
Thanksgiving Day, 1916, and began to ring out the Angelus three times each day
and to call the parish to divine worship. Weighing one thousand pounds, the bell
was made by the Meneely Bell Company of Troy, New York, and was donated by Miss
Mary A. Neville. It now sits in a small brick tower adjacent to the main church
building and still rings joyously to this day.
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