Religious and Ethnic Struggles

According to the records maintained in the Chancery of the Diocese of Portland, there was no accounting of Catholics living in Lewiston in 1846. Four years later, however, a congregation of 764 communicants spread among 125 Irish Catholic families was recorded by visiting priests. ¹ The Irish first congregated in the area around Lincoln Street as it was walking distance to the mills, the canal, railways and their first chapel. The parish of Saint Joseph would be established by the Most Reverend Bishop David W. Bacon, Maine’s first Catholic bishop, to serve this expanding community. The first chapel used by the parish was an abandoned Baptist facility located on Lincoln Street that had been purchased in 1855 by Reverend Peter McLaughlin. ² This building was refurbished and became Saint John’s Chapel.