Free Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan

“could I be so happy as to see you, I would have it for the greatest blessing; I have so many things to tell you.…”
    Through the years there were “so many things,” and also so many requests and needs. He needed altar stones—one for his home church, others for the missions. They could be broken. He had broken one. He needed vestments, a ciborium, a cheque, for the hard times continued, though to be sure the churches were flourishing, and even in its first year St Luke’s at Danville saw a thousand persons present at the Feast of the Resurrection, most of whom were not even Catholics, and the sermon, in imperfect English, was a challenge. “However,” he said, “I did not get scared; and as I had before prepared mon petit mot, I did my best to deliver it.” At about the same time, he could report, “Great many in Danville have joined the temperance Society, and some in Newark”—a national movement whose earnest power had reached the forest frontier.
    In 1842 he had “yet another thing” to ask the bishop. What was to be done if a Catholic girl would insist on marrying a man who was not baptized? In the small community of Danville such a case of relentless love, before which man or woman was often helpless, was now Lamy’s concern. He told the girl she ought not to think of marrying her lover, and seemed at first able to turn her mind in the righteous direction. But he was “afraid that she will have the man,” who, he declared, had “lost his moral character.” But “suppose the marriage must take place?”—in other words, what if she should be with child? What then should he do? Would it be better to let them go to the Squire—the Justice of the Peace—or to marry them himself after all? The matter might, for reasons hinted at, be urgent. “Answer as soon as possible, what I can do …” So an ancient blind power spoke through his own concern, in the little grassy town with its new spire and its cemetery hill. It was not always simple to be the mediator between what these monuments represented.
    In 1844 Newark, his second mission, demanded increasingly of Lamy more than he reasonably could give to it from Danville. The town was growing faster than Danville, yet the church at Newark had not even yet been plastered. Had he been overambitious in building? “Perhaps I ought to be blamed to do so much in these hard times, in this case I beg your pardon but I do hope good intention will be some excuse”—for he had gone ahead too with a modest rectory and by summer the first payment on it would be due—a hundred dollars. Perhaps he should move to Newark from Danville, though he still had “great many places to attend,” and was almost “constantly on horse-back.” He was not complaining of the labor and the fatigue, for he was “as hearty and strong as ever.”
    * Votre grandeur —the English usage is “Your Excellency.”
    Action was urged upon him from many directions—the newest one was the “already contracted” plan to build a railroad from Mansfield, Ohio, to Lake Erie. Mansfield would grow much faster than either Danville or Newark, and yet—he thought it important—”there is no regular clergyman who attends Mansfield regularly.” He had been there four times, it was only twenty-nine miles from Danville, yet he had hardly any time to go there. The matter was urgent—”Many protestants, I have no doubt would help to put up a church for this very circumstance of the railroad coming there.”
    If he was “very thankful for … the particular kindness you have showed to me,” the bishop, in his turn, must have been grateful to have a man in the field so alert to all the implications of a fast-growing society. Lamy was not only a good priest, he was also a reliable manager and observer of the hard facts all