The name of Manasses Dougherty dominates the expansion of Catholicism in this area for the next thirty years. Seeing the necessity for a church in the western part of Cambridge, he built St. Peter's on Concord Avenue in 1848. As one of the frontier churches of Boston, St. Peter's extended over much of the northwest metropolitan area. The original parish limits enclosed Belmont, Lincoln, Lexington, Bedford, Medford, Malden, and Somerville west of Dane Street. Out of St. Peter's, Fr. Dougherty built so many parishes, the last of which was St. Paul, that he received the sobriquet "Founder of Churches."
The continuing arrival and integration of immigrants were not always easy. What was perceived as an Irish flood completely changed the landscape of those who had known the village of Old Cambridge. "Paddy Jokes" appeared in some newspapers and differences between "natives" and "foreign-born" were obvious. Conservatives in the Old Village were petitioning to withdraw from the rest of Cambridge, as were the residents of East Cambridge. But Catholic growth was so rapid that Fr. Dougherty planned to erect a church in Harvard's own neighborhood. John Langdon Sibley, longtime Harvard librarian and historian, noted in his journal in 1846:
The Catholics within a few years have erected a church at East Cambridge and
have just purchased five acres to build
another church about one mile west from the University buildings. They are very quiet but zealous in all their movements and the time will come when many of the old battles, the theological at least, must be fought over again, and that too in this
country. It is incidentally remarked in the paper today that one-quarter of the population of Boston is Catholic.
Zealous, to be sure, but Sibley would hardly have called Catholics quiet once Manasses Dougherty arrived in the Old Village. A classic, energetic pioneer priest, Father Dougherty started his fund drive for St. Peter's in January, 1848, by celebrating Mass in Lyceum Hall (the site of the present Coop) and appealing for subscriptions for the new building on Concord Avenue--the Pilot reported that sixteen thousand dollars were raised. Bishop Fitzpatrick officiated at the laying of St. Peter's cornerstone in July, 1848.
It can hardly be coincidental that in this neighborhood there were two Harvard alumni among the priests present, George F. Haskins, Class of 1826, and Joseph Coolidge Shaw, S.J., Class of 1840, who preached the cornerstone sermon. Fr. Haskins, whose major work was the establishment of the first Catholic reform school in New England, also served as a temporary pastor at St. John's and at St. Peter's during the illnesses of their administrators. One evening in 1859 during Fr. Dougherty's poor health, it was Fr. Haskins who brought him a note from the parishioners with the sum of a thousand dollars for a recuperative vacation in Ireland. No doubt, the mixture of Yankees like Shaw and Haskins into the heavily Irish parish was curious--but the local clergy at this time was mainly foreign Jesuits and local converts. As Catholics were beginning to surround the college, Catholics were also beginning to emerge from within it. So, after years of anti-Popery, Harvard in fact provided some of the clergy who welcomed the first Catholic Church to Harvard Square.
