Pioneer Bishops of New Hampshire

This blog will discuss bishops that served in New Hampshire up to 1900.  For more information about New Hampshire, see my blog of September 27, 2017.

Martin Pring, an English explorer, came to the mouth of the Piscataqua River in 1603, and likely was the first European to see New Hampshire.  The first settlement was near Rye in 1623.  Much of New Hampshire’s early history was one of conflict.  Many of the early settlements were by Anglicans, which drew the attention of the Massachusetts Puritans.  Massachusetts officials sought to control New Hampshire until England made New Hampshire a separate colony in 1679.  Border disputes with Massachusetts continued well into the 18th Century.  Both Protestant groups fought the Native Americans and both detested Catholics.  Colonial laws outlawed any practice of the Faith.  Some of these anti-Catholic laws were not repealed until well after the Revolution.  Catholics were not allowed to hold state office until 1877 and another anti-Catholic provision of the state constitution was not removed until 1968.  New Hampshire became the 9th State in 1788.

There was some Catholic presence in colonial New Hampshire.  Some Native Americans were converted by French missionaries, but most eventually moved to Canada.  The first Mass was celebrated by French Jesuits in 1694 near Durham during a French raid on settlements there.  But given the hostility toward Catholics, it is not surprising that few settled in New Hampshire.  The first parish, St. Mary’s, was established in Claremont in 1823, and the second, in Dover, in 1833—at which time there were fewer than 400 Catholics in the State.  French Canadians began coming to New Hampshire in the 1830s and Irish immigrants came in the 1840s.  Manchester had a few hundred Catholics when St. Anne’s Church—New Hampshire’s third—was established by Father William McDonald in 1848.

The new French and Irish Catholics brought about a need for more parishes and more than two dozen were opened between 1850 and 1884.  In that year, Pope Leo XIII created the Diocese of Manchester to serve New Hampshire’s 45,000 Catholics.  Manchester had become New Hampshire’s largest city in 1880. 

Denis M. Bradley was born in Ireland in 1846 and came to Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1854, with his siblings and widowed mother.  He graduated from Holy Cross College in Massachusetts in 1867 and attended seminary in Troy, New York.  He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Portland, Maine, in 1871.  He initially served at the cathedral in Portland and served as chancellor for the Diocese, but took a six-month sabbatical in Europe in 1879 to regain his health.  Still in poor health upon his return, the Bishop of Portland, whose Diocese then included New Hampshire, sent Bradley to the less demanding job of pastor of St. Joseph’s parish in Manchester.  Bradley was appointed the first Bishop of Manchester in 1884 and selected St. Joseph’s to be his cathedral.

The number of Catholics increased from 45,000 to 104,000 during his time as bishop, and he increased the number of priests from 37 to 107 to minister to the larger population.  He built many schools and charitable institutions and focused on the needs of rural Catholics.  He also encouraged the Benedictines to establish an abbey and St. Anselm College.  He died in 1903 of chronic gastritis.