I always try to look for historic memorabilia where the faces of people can be seen.
In a bin at a local antique store this past summer, I found a copy of the History of the Catholic Diocese of Ogdensburg dated 1884. It has a chapter dedicated to every Catholic Church in the Ogdensburg diocese and that church’s history as of that date. It’s things like this, that sometimes shed a little light on local history.
There is a chapter in the book about Ticonderoga which is accompanied by a pencil sketch of the Rev. Jos. Butler.
“Father Butler was born in Ireland in 1828 and at the age of twelve went with a number of companions to study in the Island of Malta in the Mediterranean. He made his theology in Rome afterwards, and as member of the Franciscan order was ordained in the Albany Cathedral by Bishop M’Closkey in 1858. Since that times as a missionary priest Father Butler has served his order and the church in various parts of the east and west and in South America, until Bishop Wadhams appointed him to Ticonderoga, where he has remained for over a decade like all the priests in his neighborhood engaged in giving the finishing strokes to the work of former missionaries.”
“The mission has already been favored with the visits of Bishop M’Closkey and Conroy of Albany, and with one visit from Bishop Wadhams in 1873. Since Father Butler’s time the bishop has made four episcopal visitations at regular intervals of three years, confirming some 800 children whom the priest had already brought, after steady instructions, to their first communion. The debts of the parish have been removed, the property put in order, and a better organization given to the parish, which now numbers about one hundred and twenty families.”