NEWPORT — Arguably, the first Catholics to arrive in the city of Newport came during the American Revolution, when the French occupied the wealthy trading port for a year, though they did not remain beyond 1781. Margaret “Unsinkable Molly” Tobit Brown, a Catholic socialite who survived the sinking of the Titanic, owned a mansion in Newport. Tessie Oelrichs, the Catholic daughter of an Irish immigrant and silver king, built Rosecliff from money gifted to her from her father when she married. Alongside matrons like Alva Vanderbilt, Oelrichs became a “gatekeeper” of Gilded Age society.
These are some little-known facts about the history of Catholics in seaside Newport, told by historian John Quinn in his recent book, “The Rise of Newport’s Catholics: From Colonial Outcasts to Gilded Age Leaders,” published by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Press.
Quinn began his study of Newport’s Catholic population more than ten years ago, when he was asked to teach a course on the subject for Circle of Scholars at Salve Regina University, where he serves as a professor of history. There had been little study on the subject prior to his work, and he relied heavily on newpapers from that time and the assistance of diocesan archivist Father Robert W. Hayman.
“I was intrigued by what I found,” Quinn told Rhode Island Catholic.
Though Newport’s history of religious tolerance dates back to the royal charter of 1662, he wasn’t sure if that had applied to Catholics.
“Catholics were suspect in Newport’s early days (before the American Revolution). Newport, like Boston and other New England cities, would burn effigies of the pope on Guy Fawkes Day each year. However, once Catholics actually arrived in Newport in the form of the French, these suspicions dissipated,” Quinn said.
The Catholic immigration wave unquestionably began when Irish laborers arrived to rebuild Fort Adams. Most surprisingly of all, Quinn discovered how well Catholics in Newport got along with the Protestant population already established there.
In fact, some of these Protestants advocated strongly for their Catholic neighbors, creating a culture of religious tolerance instead of the animosity most Catholics across the country experienced during the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the 19th century, Nativism burgeoned throughout the country, smearing Catholics with hate speech and making them targets of hate crimes. Quinn explained: “There’s this long litany of horrors that happened, especially in New England. That didn’t happen in Newport. Newport was very different.”
In fact, Protestants often gave their Catholic neighbors money to purchase land or begin a business or school. Additionally, a Black businessman named George Downing, who owned a hotel in Newport, saw the injustices leveled at Irish Catholics who could not vote in the state because of property laws and campaigned to change that. Newport became a community where Catholics thrived.
By 1838, the first Catholic chapel “in all of Rhode Island” had been established to provide spiritual guidance to the Irish laborers. It wasn’t until Newport became a summer haven for wealthy southerners that a larger, more prominent church was built at the urging of some of these Catholic vacationers. Catherine Harper and her daughter Emily, descendants of Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, led this movement. This would become St. Mary Catholic Church, famous for the weddings of many of the Kennedys.
Eventually, four Catholic churches were established in the town, and attended by prominent Catholics like the Harpers, Tessie Oelrichs and Margaret Brown, among others, but also by the servants and workers who built and sustained the community.
During his research, Quinn became impressed by the contributions of these lower-class men and women.
“The generosity of people who couldn’t have had much in terms of resources, it’s amazing how much these folks gave to support these different churches, schools, and they’re very admirable in what they were able to accomplish with limited means,” he commented.
The pastor of St. Joseph on Broadway even periodically posted a “Ladies’ List” of donors – mainly household servants who gave of their meager earnings.
“And it was a long list of donors. There was some real generosity,” he commented. It was a testament of the faith of Newport’s early Catholic population.
To the contrary, though, Quinn notes that “sometimes the Catholics’ worst enemies were themselves,” with infighting among pastors and different ethnic groups.
The book ends just after the establishment of the last church in Newport, the then-Portuguese Church of Jesus Savior – the parish Quinn now belongs to – around 1930. The author admits that there is more work to be done on the subject, but his work has been well-received so far and the first printing of “The Rise of Newport’s Catholics” has already sold out.
Quinn expects his work to appeal to local Catholic populations in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Much has been written about the mansions and wealthy members of Newport society, but little has been written “about who might have been the maids in the homes or the gardeners or those supporting them, many of whom were Irish or Portuguese or in some cases, Italian,” he said.
“I hope it might be of interest to anyone who studies American Catholicism or Irish-American history in that it is such a different experience than the standard.”
With Irish ancestry himself, Quinn has long been interested in the history of that group. He studied Irish history at Georgetown, focusing on the Fenian Brotherhood — an Irish revolutionary group in the late 1800s — then completed his graduate degree at the University of Notre Dame. He intended to go into research, but while studying at Georgetown, his plans changed.
“I was more interested in the research, but then when I started in grad school, they had me work as a teacher’s assistant and I really liked that. So, I have to say I kind of stumbled into teaching,” he said.
And through God’s providence, just as he graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1992, Salve Regina was seeking a professor of Irish history, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“It’s been fun ever since, all these years.”
