January 29, 2004

A look back at the old St. Brigid's parish in North Memphis

By Dr. Joan Zurhellen

Diocesan Archivist

The fourth oldest parish in the City of Memphis was named St. Brigid's and placed under the protection of that "Queen of the Irish Race." Founded at the direction of Bishop Patrick A. Feehan of Nashville in the spring of 1870, it was organized to serve the large and growing Irish population of the city. It occupied land at Third and Overton, largely serving its immediate surrounding area, but the parish also included all of what at the time was north Memphis, basically all land north of Market Street.

During the 68 years of its existence, it could easily have earned the title "Hard Luck Parish." Its dedication in December 1870, and the opening of its parish school in 1871 were followed in quick succession by two cholera, a smallpox, and three yellow fever epidemics. St. Brigid's was in the heart of the yellow fever district for all three.

A portion of the parish, the "Pinch," was closest to the river and subject to overflow and standing water whenever the Mississippi backed up the Wolf River or Gayoso Bayou. It was the oldest and most densely populated section of the city, largely peopled by poor Irish, many of whom worked on the railroads or on the river.

Of the 1,600 Memphis citizens who died during the 1873 yellow fever epidemic, 800 were St. Brigid parishioners. On the first Sunday in the late fall when, after the first frost, the epidemic was declared over, it was noted that no parishioner was present at Sunday Mass who was not in mourning.

In the far worse yellow fever epidemic of 1878, even though a large percentage of citizens fled the city, over 5,000 Memphians died. Two thousand of them were Catholics, largely from St. Brigid's Parish, including the 40-year-old widely popular founding pastor of St. Brigid's, Father Martin Walsh, and his cousin Father Michael Meagher, who had been visiting him and had remained with him in the rectory and parish to help tend the sick and administer last rites.

The much lighter yellow fever epidemic of 1879 followed, but the St. Brigid's population had already been decimated. Many of the St. Brigid parishioners who were still alive after these last two epidemics owed their survival to Father William Walsh (no kin to Father Martin Walsh).

Father William Walsh had been an assistant at St. Brigid's but had been transferred to St. Patrick's as assistant in the summer of 1878. When, in the autumn of that year, St. Brigid's pastor died, the Bishop ordered Father William Walsh back to St. Brigid's. Soon thereafter he established Camp Father Matthew on farm land well away from the river about two and a half miles northeast of the city limits in an area just a little north of the location of the present parish of St. Therese.

The camp was for the St. Brigid Parishioners, and the nuns who at the time were serving at St. Patrick's and at St. Brigid's. No one was allowed in the camp who did not agree to rigorously follow its rules. It served about 400 people during each of the years it was in existence. Brother Maurelian and the Christian Brothers who had moved to a country location near the present confluence of Lamar and Airways frequently traveled to Camp Matthew and helped with its implementation by keeping its records and accounts.

Due to Father Walsh's Herculean efforts money for the camp was obtained from Catholic Societies in the U. S. and from Temperance Unions all over the country. (Father Matthew had been the leader of the Temperance Society in Ireland.) He also appealed to the Secretary of the Army for tents, blankets, food and other supplies for the camp. The parishioners and religious lived in the Camp until the 1878 epidemic was declared over. Again, in 1879 when yellow fever struck, Camp Matthew was reinstituted by Father Walsh and again helped some parishioners to survive.

Following the epidemics, as pastor of St. Brigid's Father Walsh undertook several measures to try to help the remaining parishioners and to start to pay off the Parish's staggering debt. Unfortunately, many of his actions angered or were misunderstood by some of the parishioners and made him very unpopular. Finally, in the late 1880s he was transferred to Chattanooga.

The early twentieth century witnessed two more disasters for the parish when parts of the Church and school were under water from the disastrous Mississippi River floods of 1912 and 1913. It fell to a later pastor, Father James P. Whitfield, to free the Church from debt and to restore the facilities. Unfortunately, by the time that was done, many of the parishioners had moved or were moving eastward, some to the areas around St. Therese Parish which Father Whitfield later pastored. In 1938 St. Brigid's was closed and the parish dissolved.