http://womensvoicesforchange.org/of-a-childhood-a-city-and-a-churchs-douceur-de-vivre.htm
Of a Childhood, a City and a Church’s ‘Douceur de Vivre’
May 18, 2009 by Olga Statz
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The story begins in the 1830s, when word got back to the French religious leaders of the day that the French Catholics in New York were leaving the church in droves. Unwilling to sit through sermons in English, they opted to attend French Protestant services or not go to church at all. Alarmed at this trend, the Archbishop of Nancy preached a mass in French at St. Peter’s on Barclay Street, urging the French to establish their own church, like the Germans and the Italians, had in order to strengthen their community and family ties, and create a visible link to France for their rapidly Americanizing children. The French heeded the call, and by 1841 the French had their own church on Canal Street, St. Vincent de Paul. In the 1850s, the parish moved to its present location in Chelsea, on West 23rd Street.
The pastor of the church was Annet Lafont, a French priest from the order of the Fathers of Mercy, a French Missionary order. By all accounts, he was an extraordinary leader. He founded orphanages in New York City and Tarrytown, homes for the elderly and young women’s residences, and what is now known as Manhattan College grew from his parish school. Chronically short of funds, he accomplished all this, it seems, from sheer force of will.
Father Lafont, however, was not content simply to mind his own flock. In a document celebrating the centenary of the Fathers of Mercy, we are told that “Father Lafont was moved by the truly pitiable condition of the Negroes in New York. They could hold no real estate, were permitted in no public vehicle or place of amusement, and when traveling, they had to use a special car which was little better than those for cattle, and they suffered many indignities and acts of oppression.” Though this list of sociological and legal facts gives us an indication of the poor conditions in which Blacks lived in this city, nothing is more startling than reading eyewitness accounts of the mental and physical violence they daily suffered. In an 1846 letter to Paris describing life in New York and the work of Father Lafont, a Frenchman, Henry de Courcy, gives us just such a first hand account of daily life in the antebellum years:
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[JR: Interesting. Any MC history buffs out there? Need confirmation.]
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