My Genealogy Hound

REV. ANTHONY KLAWITER, pastor of St. Hyacinth church of Dunkirk and who planned and built in Buffalo, N. Y., the first Byzantine church ever erected in the United States, was born at Posen, Poland, November 13, 1836, and is a son of Augustine and Joseph (Telarska) Klawiter. He was reared in the historic city of Warsaw, whose struggle in the cause of Polish independence has become a part of the history of the world and received a liberal education. In 1860 he was ordained as a priest at Warsaw where he was the pastor of a Catholic church for fifteen years. In 1875 he came to the United States where he was stationed in Chicago and had charge of St. Stanislaus Catholic church for one year. He then went to Howard county, Nebraska, where he was pastor of St. Paul’s church for four years at the end of which time, in 1881, he came to Dunkirk and became pastor of St. Hyacinth’s church which was erected in 1875. After three years service he went to Buffalo and had charge of St. Stanislaus church for two years. In 1886 he built St. Adalbert’s church with a seating capacity of sixteen hundred and a school building to accommodate one thousand children besides a fine parsonage. The church and school were both in one building which he erected in the wonderfully short space of three months. This church was burned on January 26, 1889, and within the same year Father Klawiter planned and commenced the erection of the present splendid St. Adalbert church of Buffalo. In 1890 he returned to Dunkirk where he has charge of St. Hyacinth church with a congregation of three hundred families, and is erecting a tasteful parsonage in addition to daily visiting and instructing in his parochial school of two hundred and fifty children. Reverend Father Klawiter is a man of fine education and refined tastes, who is an earnest and successful church worker.

The St. Adalbert Catholic church which Father Klawiter planned and built in Buffalo is a stone and brick structure of the Byzantine style and consists of a grand portico, vestibule, nave and two aisles, transept, 52x106 feet; sanctuary, two vestries, two chapels for the sisters and a large choir with accommodations for six hundred singers. This church is in the form of a Latin cross 86x235 feet in total width and length, with two large towers one hundred and thirty-five feet in height and an imposing cupola of one hundred and sixty-five feet, whose interior is frescoed in Byzantine colors and paintings, representing scenes from the life of St. Adalbert. It has imposing altars, organ, chancel, the statues of the Apostles and the fourteen stations of the crucifixion. St. Adalbert church will be visited not only by worshipers but also by amateurs of art. The head of this grand undertaking was the Reverend Father Andrew Klawiter, then rector of St. Adalbert congregation, through whose incitation, sacrifice and love of art, one of the sublimest monuments for Christian worship, was erected to the pride of the Polish nation and as an ornament to this country.