civilized world, still I am content with my lot and with my surroundings; for during the few years that may yet pass before I am carried to the grave, I care not where I may be located provided only I can be of some use. Wherefore having due regard for the dispositions of your Eminence and for the dignity with which I myself am invested, I do not intend to throw out any insinuation which might be construed as meaning that I wish to abandon my post.

The circumstances however in which I find myself and our mutual relations demand the open and candid sincerity of the sons of God. If your Eminence refuse to grant me any succour, I shall indeed be profoundly sorry, but at the same time I shall be fully resigned; and I shall return to my diocess to labor according to my strength. But if your Eminence be pleased to accord me the assistance asked for, I am sure that a new and wider career of usefulness will be opened up before me, in which, if God will but prolong my life and will sustain me by His grace, I will employ myself in bringing into the effulgence of His divine light many and many who are now sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death.

[Written in Rome, A. D., 1833. F. K.]

GOSHENHOPPEN REGISTERS.

OF

Baptisms, Marriages, Confirmations, Deaths, Etc. (Third Series.)

1787-1800.

TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY REV. THOMAS C. MIDDLETON, D.D., O.S. A.

In former volumes of these RECORDS were published the registers from 1741 to 1785, belonging to the interesting old mission church of St. Paul's, (now since 1837 known as the church of the Blessed Sacrament,) at Goshen hoppen, (now Bally,) in Berks County, Pa.

During that period this mission being in charge of the Jesuit Fathers Theodore Schneider and John Baptist Ritter, or De Ritter, were recorded 1,126 baptisms, 16 conversions, 178 marriages and 115 deaths and burials.

Fr. Ritter was in residence at Goshenhoppen up to his death, in the early part of 1787. But the registers kept by him during the last two years of his life-from 1785 to 1787-are missing.*

In this the second-volume of the registers belonging to Goshenhoppen church, which we are treating of in this present paper, are contained the sacramental records of that mission for the 32 years from 1787 down to 1819. In it are recorded the baptisms (in number 934) down to 1807;

* For a study and analysis of these early Goshen hoppen registers prior to 1785, the student may refer (with perhaps some advantage) to the Papers on them published in vol. ii of these RECORDS, (for 1886-1888,) pp. 316-17; and in vol. iii, (for 1888-91,) pp. 295302. All these early registers up to 1785 are in one book, or volume,

marriages (in number 270) down to 1819; and deaths and burials (in number 114) down to 1818.

In this Third Series are transcribed the registrations belonging to the last century alone, ending with the year 1800. The entries therein relating to the years subsequent to this date it is not the purpose of this SOCIETY to publish at present.

This second volume here translated, is a book bound in boards of 172 pages,* measuring 8 inches in length and 6% in width, in very fair state of preservation, as a rule carefully and neatly filled up, and no parts of it apparently wanting. (At the end of the volume six leaves have been cut out close to the sewing of the book. But they did not contain, it is likely, any church records.) On the inside of the front cover of it the Register bears the following inscription (in Latin) † in Fr. Helbron's hand, of which the following is a translation.

TITLE OF VOLUME II OF GOSHENHOPPEN REGISTERS.

"Book of Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths of the Church of 'Goschenhoppen, Herfordt Daunschipp Bergs Kaunti '; begun under Peter Helbronn, Third Missionary, delegated thereto on November 22, 1787, by the Superior of the Mission, the Right Reverend D. [Dominus] Carroll [here these words-'à Missionaribus Electo' have been crossed out by Fr. Helbron], confirmed by Pius VI Supreme Pontiff, and in 1790 consecrated Bishop of the Church of Baltimore at Lullworth [sic, Lulworth] castle in England."

Underneath this inscription (also in Fr. Helbron's hand) is a Note (in Latin) calling attention to the fact that at

* The paging employed throughout this description of it has been made by a modern hand; the old missionaries themselves having used it without any paging, + It should be observed that in these records following what was a common custom among missionaries in the last century and even in the early part of the present one, all registrations, with one exception (to be noted further on,) are in the Latin language. Though the reader will occasionally meet here and there a word or so in English, or German.

the end of the book is a statement of the repairs and improvements made (at Goshenhoppen) in the church building, house, and farm-" plantatione," which, (he says,) had all gone to ruin-" ubique devastata."

Not unlike in this respect to other old mission registers of the period, Fr. Helbron has made his one book a repository of all church memoranda. In the beginning of it he has opened his Baptismal Register; towards the centre of it his records of marriages; then further on he gives the list of deaths and burials; while at the very end of the book, (as we have seen from the title page,) is an account of the temporalities of St. Paul's mission.

In this Series have been set down the various registrations in the Goshen hoppen Book with few exceptions just as they stand in the original. These, very few however in number, are certain entries in the baptismal and marriage records wherein has been noted by the missionaries the fact that the subjects baptized or married had been born out of wedlock. (Moreover in the Marriage Register in two entries Fr. Helbron has employed a singular phrase, the writer has never met it before,—to signify, it seems, a not common, and perhaps,-though this interpretation of it is stated with some misgivings as to the correctness of it, a not wholly honorable position of one of the parties to marriage. The wording of these entries referred to includes in one case these terms-"married so and so cum corta sua"; and in the other "cum sua corta acatholica". In the translation of the two entries these words have been omitted.)

-

*

**

The names of such unfortunates and of all related to them-parents and witnesses-have been left out of this translation, that the records may be to no one needlessly a shame, but to all concerned therein a source of honor and pride.

In 1787, on the death of Fr. Ritter, the second missionary, and until some time in the present century, the last Jesuit, in charge of Goshenhoppen, succeeded Rev. Peter

Helbron, or Helbronn, for this clergyman wrote his name in more than one way, who held charge of it for four years. Fr. Helbron came to Goshenhoppen in 1787, and remained there in residence until 1791, when, on his being transferred to Philadelphia, his place was given to Rev. N. [Nicholas ?] Delvaux, the fourth missionary in charge, who held it for two years up to 1793; his successor being Rev. Paul Erntzen, the missionary in care of St. Paul's for 25 years until his death in 1818.

Fr. Helbron's first entry in the Register-a baptism-is dated November 13, 1787; his first marriage February 3, the same year; * his last baptism August 19, 1791; and his last official entry—a marriage-on the following day, August 20, of the same year.†

Yet in subsequent years (as we learn from the registers) on his occasional visits to Goshen hoppen he was called upon to administer the sacraments by Fr. Erntzen. Thus during the latter's rectorship Fr. Helbron married a couple on November 29, 1798; and again on September 8, the year after; while on June 10 and 16 of the same year1799, he has recorded two baptisms.

During the rectorship of Fr. Helbron, he was assisted in his charge (though only for a short while at the outset of his term in 1787) by his brother-Rev. John Baptist Charles Helbron, whose name appears only three times, all

* Here in this marriage entry is an open conflict of dates, which I am utterly unable to reconcile. From the Tille-page of the Register (given ahead), where Fr. Helbron has set down the date of his appointment to Goshenhoppen as "November 22, 1787 "; and from the List of Memoranda at the end of the Register, where in unmistakable terms he says that he entered into the Mission on "November 22, 1787",from these two clearly written entries, no other date can be fixed for his having taken charge of St. Paul's, than just what he has himself recorded.

And yet following the marriage-entry given in the text for "February 1787", are others for the subsequent months for that same year yet all earlier than the recorded date of his arrival. But contenting ourselves with the observation that most likely the year-" 1787"-at the head of the marriage entries is an error for 1788 we leave other ways of solving this mystery to our readers.

† In all sketches of Rev. Peter Helbron, as far as the writer is acquainted with them, the date of his closing his missionary career at Goshenhoppen is set for "August 19, 1791"-the date of his last entry in the Baptismal Register; (p. 34.) But he himself has recorded a marriage-Anthony Zweyer's with Mary Zweyer, on the day after"August 20." (See p. 81 of the Marriage Register.