Sacred Heart - St. John's Tom Glover Circa 1983

This is the manuscript for a column I wrote a number of years ago about the fascinating history of St. John's Parish, or as we know it today, Sacred Heart Parish.

"ST. JOHN'S OF TRENTON"
Tom Glover

Cooper Street ran behind St. John's (now Sacred Heart Church). It became the victim of urban renewal. Another long-forgotten street is Union Street. That area south of Broad Street in the Mill-Hill area was known as "lrishtown" in the 1860's and 70's, and later became a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.
Today, as one travels the streets of South Trenton in the area of Centre, Ferry, Bridge, and Lamberton Streets, one can still see many of the old houses which were a part of the original area known as "Irishtown." During the mid 1800's many Irish immigrants settled in this old area of Trenton; drawn there by the Cooper-Hewitt steel plant and the John A. Roebling factory, as well as other mills in the area. Even as the British settlers in the South Trenton area were to be drawn to Saint Paul's Episcopal Church on Centre Street, so too, were the Irish to be drawn into the tight little community of Irish Catholics who attended St. John's.
There was a vast difference however, in the levels of religious tolerance in those far off days of the 1860's. To be Roman Catholic was bad enough; to be an Irish Roman Catholic was sure to bring the tainted specter of bigotry; often subtle, but more often than not quite blatant.
It is little wonder that the early Irish settlers of South Trenton stayed together in a near-commune type existence for quite a number of years. Their world revolved around working at menial factory labor, providing for their families, and drawing their spiritual nourishment from St. John's.
The natural proclivity of the fabled Irish liquid nourish­ment was certainly no greater in the Irish than it was in the English, Italians, or any other ethnic group. Contemporary pubic opinion would have one believe otherwise. The Irish were perceived as irresponsible drunkards who owed their allegiance not to America, but to a foreign holy man who was bent on destroying America's system of public schools. One of the most widely circulated magazines of the day was a "Harper's Weekly." One of the issues showed a caricature of a young Irish boy holding the Catechism. He had an ugly, "dim-witted" look of a monkey, rather than a human being. The caption read: "If New York had been thoroughly educated it would never have fallen into the hands of the immoral Irish Catholics and foreign priests."
Such was the environment into which our Irish community settled. In a little one-story frame building on Cooper Street, many students labored under the tutelage of old school­masters who were born and educated in Ireland.
One of them was Peter Cantwell. Cantwell served as the first master of the Cooper Street School. He was in charge of the grammar school which was located in the basement of St. John's Church. Upon completion of the Cooper Street facility in the early 1860's, he moved in as head master; taking the older boys of the school with him. The younger children stayed in the St. John's Church basement under the care of the Sisters of Charity. Others to follow in Cantwell's steps as schoolmaster included Mr. Thomas Keogh, "Mr. Dunphy," and "Mr. Hogan." .
Time has vindicated the much maligned Irish of Tren­ton's "Irishtown." They remained faithful to their God, and equally faithful to their commitment to better themselves in an America which was very slow in accepting them. Following is a lengthy listing of the surnames of some of the early Irish settlers who attended that little wooden one-story frame schoolhouse on Cooper Street: Donnelly, Tyrrell, Barnes, Hickey, Nolan, Connelly, Burns, Stanton, Sheridan, Kelly, McGrath, Travers, Weldon, Keegan, McCaffrey, McKenna, Haggerty, Donovan, O'Neill, Mullen, Lane, Logue, Cahill, and Roche.
The bibliographical credit for this column is from an old copy of the Trenton State Gazette. When it was written the little school was still standing, but the Irishtown kids were now going to a new school on Lamberton Street. A quote from this article is a fitting way to bring this little historical sketch to a close:
"Many initials laboriously carved with a dull penknife upwards of a century ago, may still be traced on the storm ­beaten and time-worn weather boards of the school. In the case of not a few, the same initials have since been graven in marble in St. John's and St. Mary's Cemeteries, for a goodly number of the sprightly boys who used to answer the tinkling bell in the little schoolhouse are long since dead."