St. Paul Church History 1881-2006

Page One

Prior to the year 1850 very few Catholics lived in the Salem area. However, around 1853 with the building of the railroads from Pittsburgh to Ft. Wayne and Chicago, Irish Catholic laborers began settling in Salem and its vicinity. Sometime between 1853 and 1855 Father William O'Connor visited Salem and offered Mass in the home of Michael Derrick. It was difficult for Catholics to settle in Salem because of some prejudice. This reality discouraged any thought of organizing a permanent parish at that time. For the next thirteen or fourteen years, the few Catholic families living in Salem attended Mass either in Alliance or Leetonia. Fathers Striker, Welsh, Prendergast, Ludwick, Moes, Peter, who served in Dungannon, and Father Mulcahey, a professor at Louisville College, occasionally provided Mass for the Catholics in Salem.

It was 1868 that Father Eli W.J. Lindesmith, resident pastor of Alliance, who also conducted services in Leetonia, took charge of the Salem Mission. The first record of Father Lindesmith offering Mass in Salem was on January 22, 1869 in the home of John Shannon. He continued to offer Mass once a month on a weekday in one of their homes and four times a year on Sunday at the Town Hall, whenever there were five Sundays in a month.

On October 27, 1869 Father Lindesmith offered Mass in the home of Mrs. Ann O'Connor and announced to those assembled that he had chosen Saint Paul as the name and patron of the new mission, appointing January 25, Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, as the patronal feast of the new mission.

On May 24, 1872 Father Lindesmith was transferred from the Alliance parish to be the new pastor of Saint Patrick Parish in Leetonia, from which place he continued to serve the mission in Salem. In March of 1873 Father had purchased church lots for $800 on East Main Street (now State Street), and the Easter collection of March 30, 1873, which amounted to $51.45, was used as a down payment on the lots.

On July 10, 1880 Father Lindesmith resigned his pastorate to join the United States Cavalry as a chaplain in the Indian Wars, which were raging in the West at that time. Father Lindesmith served as chaplain in the Army for eleven years and later died at the age of ninety-four, and was buried in Dungannon, Ohio, where a large memorial marks his grave

In July of 1880 Father Clement Treiber arrived as the first resident pastor of Saint Paul Parish in Salem. He found fifteen Catholic families residing in the city and ten in the countryside. With this small group, he began plans for the erection of a permanent church. He celebrated Mass for one year in the Town Hall. A frame church was erected and the cornerstone laid in early 1881. This church was built and completely furnished at a total cost of $3,600. The compleited edifice was dedicated by the Most Reverend Richard Gilmour, Bishop of the Cleveland Diocese, on November 28, 1886.