Mechanicville Catholics mark big anniversary

The events culminated a full year of observing the sesquicentennial.

The construction of St. Paul's church, the first Catholic church to be erected in the Saratoga County town, resulted from a flurry of Irish immigration that began as early as the 1820s and '30s, before the Albany Diocese itself was established (in 1847).

According to records at the parish, itinerant priests would stop occasionally at a "station," usually someone's home, to celebrate Mass and minister to those immigrants. One of them, John Short, donated the use of his barn for Mass, very near the spot where the original St. Paul's Church now stands. Twenty years later, he donated that land as well as a large portion of the money needed to build the church itself. In 1852, St. Paul's became a full-fledged parish.

In the next 50 years, St. Paul's grew from what the parish history calls an "old-time country mission" into a parish that served a booming mill-town population of Irish, Italian and Lithuanian immigrants and their families. The newcomers were attracted by the jobs that were plentiful in the textile and paper mills as well as on the nearby railroad.

Early on, the parishioners had a special dedication to St. Augustine, establishing a sodality of devotees as early as 1883. Priests from the Augustinian order have served in the parish since that time.

At the end of the 19th century, many Italian immigrants settled in the Mechanicville area, and the population of the parish began to outgrow the original building.

Between 1906 and 1918, the pastor, Rev. Daniel J. O'Sullivan, moved ahead with plans to build a bigger church to accommodate the swelling numbers of parishioners. Today, the imposing Gothic structure of St. Paul's Church stands just around the corner from the original building.

Its cornerstone was laid in 1912, and it was described as "one of the most beautiful and outstanding Gothic edifices in upstate New York" in an article published in the Troy Record in 1962. St. Paul's rises 80 feet at its gables and 140 feet to the base of the copper cross at its steeple.

Meanwhile, Rev. Serafino Aurigemma, OSA, arrived in Mechanicville in 1919 and established the Church of the Assumption at the original St. Paul's building on William Street in order to minister to the special needs of the many Italian immigrants who had come to the parish. He would remain as pastor for 42 years.

In 1977, the two parishes merged. At that time, the Augustinians entered into an agreement with the Diocese to continue to staff Assumption/St. Paul's. That allowed the Augustinian influence to continue as both church buildings remain in use under the leadership of Rev. William Ricchuti, OSA, pastor.

(10-24-02) [[In-content Ad]]