Father John M. Cronin was born November 13, 1873, in Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland. He received his elementary education in the Listowel National School and his high school courses in the Christian Brothers’ School in Tralee, County Kerry. In this latter school, he began his career teaching as a layman in 1888. But after four years, the voice of the Great Teacher called him to St. Stanislaus College, Macon, Ga., the novitiate of the Southern Province of the Society of... Read more
Born Peter Christopher Arnold Daly to Irish parents, the young man grew up in Brooklyn, where he attended Sacred Heart Academy in Fort Greene, a school long since closed. After the death of his father, he started acting at age seventeen. He was noted for having helped introduce American audiences to the plays of George Bernard Shaw. Mrs. Warren’s Profession, which dealt with prostitution, was closed down for indecency by the authorities. During the early silent film era, Daly became... Read more
There are few old-time dwellers in the city of Toledo, Ohio, who are more prominent or better respected than the gentleman here mentioned. His prominence is not because of marked ability or great wealth, nor is the high esteem in which he is held to be accounted for on any “holier than thou” assumption, or any high place in the line of special perfections. He is, and has never laid claim to being more than, an average man. Those who... Read more
BENEDICTINE SISTERS OF MT. OLIVE (White Benedictines) (1874) As American History cannot be studied thoroughly unless viewed with a European background, likewise the history of our humble Convent leads us across the sea, over mountains and valleys, until our wandering mind reaches a quaint, picturesque Convent, nestling high up on a peak of the Swiss Alps: it is the Benedictine Convent “Maria Rickenbach.” There in 1862 and again in 1867 two virgins, (Sister M. Agnes Dali and Sister M. Beatrice... Read more
EMBRACE CATHOLIC FAITH. Members of the Society of Atonement at Graymoor Received into Church. (The New York Times, October 31, 1909) WEST POINT, N.Y., Oct. 30—The Society of the Atonement at Graymoor, near Garrison, N.Y., was corporately received into the Catholic Church today, the ceremony taking place in the chapel of the community. The Right Rev. Mgr. Joseph H. Conroy, Vicar General of the Diocese of Ogdensburg, an old friend of the Society, acting under the authority of Archbishop Farley,... Read more
MUNRO, Peter Simcoe Morton, actor, author and lecturer, was born in York, England, Feb. 17, 1842, son of Rev. Alexander Fraser and Helen (Miller) Munro, both natives of Scotland, who came to America when the subject of this sketch was twelve years old. After attending the Model School, Toronto, Canada, he studied oratory and dramatic art for three years. He began to learn the printing trade, but soon gave it up to enter the dramatic profession, in which he remained... Read more
No, he’s not a character from a Dickens novel. He’s Father G.B. Weikamp, a native of Westphalia, Germany. In 1850 he came to Chicago, where he started St. Francis Church. In 1855, he started the Indian Mission at Cross Village, Michigan, in 1855. He served there until his death on March 19, 1889. Father Weikamp’s secular garb, replete with walking cane, was typical of priests during the mid-nineteenth century. At a time when anti-Catholicism was particularly strong in American life,... Read more
Today marks the 35th anniversary of the passing of actor John Wayne. Born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa, his family moved to California when he was young. After graduating from Glendale High School in 1925, he played football for the University of Southern California until a shoulder injury precluded his sports career. As his latest (and possibly best) biographer Scott Eyman notes, Wayne had already gotten the acting bug, starting off as a prop man and later as an... Read more
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