LITMIR.BIZ

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the thoughts running through the mind of a nineteen-year-old finding himself in an unfamiliar land.

      An obituary for Thomas Connary in the Coös County Democrat from the year 1899 provides some further details about this early phase in his American experience:

      When about nineteen years old he left his home for America, and came to the town of Lancaster, N.H., in the early part of June. He had but fifteen cents in his possession at this time. He hired himself to Mr. Josiah Bellows for the small sum of seven dollars a month, and after having served his time with this gentleman he went about ditching for the farmers. During the winters he threshed wherever he could get employment. At that time, as is well known, threshing was done by hand. He seldom or ever got his pay in money but accepted the tenth bushel as compensation for his hard labor. He kept up this mode of livelihood for several years, then he purchased a small farm in Northumberland, on which he had a log cabin for a dwelling. While here his beloved mother, one sister and two brothers, John and Simon, came from Ireland to sweeten his life and labors. He now seemed happier, having his mother for housekeeper. At the age of thirty he married a worthy lady whose name was Lucinda Stone. The following year he demolished the log cabin and erected in its stead a homesome frame building, the first of this nature ever erected in the town. He lived in this town for five years, working chiefly for the neighboring farmers. He was always very intimate with his old employee, Mr. Bellows, speaking of him ever after in the highest terms and praise. There were born to them in Northumberland one daughter and a son. He sold his farm here and purchased the old Partridge homestead in No. Stratford, on which he spent the remainder of his life.

      In 1846, Connary settled in the town of Stratford, Coös County, then a town of some 550 people located on the Connecticut River on New Hampshire’s northwestern border with Vermont.³ Comprising the two settlements of North Stratford and Stratford Hollow, the town was granted its charter in 1762 under the name of Woodbury; this charter was regranted in 1773 with the name of Stratford in memory of Stratford-on-Avon, probably via Stratford, Connecticut, from where some of its earliest settlers had come. In Jeannette R. Thompson’s impressive History of the Town of Stratford, New Hampshire, 1773–1925, published in 1925, we read the following about Thomas Connary, who was deeply involved in communal affairs: “Thomas Connary, one of Stratford’s most worthy citizens, came here in the ’40s, and held many important offices during the fifty years of his residence in Stratford. He was selectman and treasurer during the Civil War, and furnished much of the material for the town history of that period.”⁴

      In this rural New Hampshire setting, which prospered as a farming and logging center, especially with the coming of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1853, Connary lived in his family farmstead with his wife, Lucinda, and their five children, Simon, Mary, John, Joseph, and Anne, until his death in 1899. Connary played a central role in establishing the Catholic mission in Stratford, according to Thompson:

      T. Connary was the first resident Roman Catholic, and to his ardent zeal and fervent piety the present prosperous church owes much for its maintenance through its pioneer days. “Of Mr Connary it may be said with the utmost truthfulness that he has ever borne an irreproachable Christian character as citizen, neighbour, friend; and in business he has maintained the highest type, and no one has been more trusted and honored by his townspeople. Indeed the entire family are numbered among our best citizens.” . . . Through Mr. Connary’s efforts a Roman Catholic priest from Montpelier, Vt., came to care for the spiritual needs of the men of that faith who were employed in building the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad, in construction here during the late ’40s and early ’50s; and Mass was first celebrated in a little building a few rods east of the station. . . . Mr. Connary bought the land on which the present church stands in 1866; but, as a church had been built in Bloomfield, building here was deferred until 1887, when a church was erected at a cost of $3,000.⁵

      We know that after starting out with nothing and accepting “the tenth bushel as compensation for his hard labor,” Connary, once established, did well and managed his finances deftly. The census record of 1870 for the town of Stratford estimates the value of the Connary real estate at a full $6,000, one of the town’s higher valuations. In January 1899 the obituary in the Coös County Democrat characterized him as a “deeply religious man” whose “confidence in God was unlimited,” while noting that “he was very industrious and of good financial abilities. . . . His generosity to the church of his heart is well known often indeed depriving himself for this end.” Connary’s contribution to the Catholic mission in the area came not only in the form of donations for the foundation of the Catholic church in Stratford but also in the purchase of the land for the cemetery and church (established in 1879) in Bloomfield, Vermont, across the Connecticut River, a stone’s throw from North Stratford. Today, the stained glass window in the Sacred Heart Church in Stratford carries the name Thomas Connary, in memory of the benefactor and the town’s first resident Roman Catholic.⁶

      Connary’s adherence to the Catholic faith was deep and fervent, fueled during his adult life by the diligent reading of Catholic devotional literature. While he collected books throughout most of his life, in later years his identity as a devout Irish American Catholic revolved around, and even gained meaning from, the purchasing, reading, annotating, and sharing of religious books. Records show that Connary was a member of the Stratford Hollow Library Association and that he was one of the twenty-six original subscribers (at the subscription rate of $10) when the Library Hall was constructed in 1884 to house approximately four hundred volumes.⁷ Most important, he gathered an impressive private library, predominantly of Catholic devotional, hagiographic, catechetical, and apologetic works, but also of dictionaries and general reference, as well as writing on the subjects of travel and topography, philosophy, and history.

      We can only conjecture about the full extent of Connary’s library, which must have comprised several hundred volumes (see the appendix). This study looks at a segment of his library that has survived—a collection of about thirty books, nearly all on religious themes, purchased by Connary while he was in the United States from the 1850s onwards, and annotated by him from when he was in his fifties until a few months before his death at the age of eighty-four. It is useful from the outset to list those of Connary’s books that figure most prominently in the following discussion. All contain copious annotations and miscellaneous documents.

      • James Balmes. Fundamental Philosophy. Translated by Henry F. Brownson. 2 vols. New York: D. & J. Sadlier, 1858.

      • Elizabeth de Bodenham. Mrs. Herbert and the Villagers: or, Familiar Conversations on the Principal Duties of Christianity. 2 vols. (vol. 2 only). Baltimore: Fielding Lucas, Jr., 1853.

      • Jean-Pierre Camus. The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales. New York: P. O’Shea, 1867.

      • M. A. G. Chardon. Memoirs of a Guardian Angel. Baltimore: John Murphy, 1873.

      • Frederick W. Faber. All for Jesus: or, The Easy Ways of Divine Love. Baltimore: John Murphy, 1857.

      • Fables of Aesop and Others. Translated by Samuel Croxall. New York: Derby & Jackson, 1859.

      • St. Francis of Sales. The True Spiritual Conferences of St. Francis of Sales. London: Richardson and Son, 1862.

      • George Foxcroft Haskins. Travels in England, France, Italy, and Ireland. Boston: Patrick Donahoe, 1856.

      • Julian of Norwich. Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864.

      • Thomas H. Kinane. The Dove of the Tabernacle. New York: P. M. Haverty, 1876.

      • P. R. Leatherman. Elements of Moral Science. Philadelphia: James Challen & Son, 1860.

      • F. Lewis. [Louis of Granada.] The Sinner’s Guide. Philadelphia: Henry M’Grath, 1845.

      • The Lives of Eminent Saints. Boston: Patrick Donahoe, 1853.

      • The Lives of the Fathers of the Desert. Baltimore: Fielding Lucas, Jr., no year.

      • James O’Leary. A History of the Bible, its Origin, Object, and Structure. New York: D. & J. Sadlier, 1873.

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