My Genealogy Hound

Rev. J. A. Connolly, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, was born July 13, 1855, in County Mayo, Ireland. His father, Joseph Connolly, immigrated to the United States in 1857, and settled in Potosi, Washington Co., Mo., where he still resides. Father Connolly was reared in Potosi, receiving there, in the public and private schools, his early education. His classical and theological education was received at St. Vincent’s College, Cape Girardeau, Mo., where he completed his studies in 1876. Being under the canonical age, twenty-three years, required for ordination to the priesthood, in the fall of 1876 he entered St. Francis Seminary, near Milwaukee, Wis., for the purpose of learning the German language. On June 18, 1878, he was ordained priest in St. John’s Church, St. Louis, Mo., by Bishop P. J. Ryan, now Archbishop of Philadelphia, Penn. Immediately after ordination he was appointed temporary pastor of St. Columbkill’s Church, South St. Louis, where he remained five months; he was then appointed to New Madrid, Mo., where he was pastor three years and four months. Whilst there he attended missions over an extent of country 140 miles, among them Charleston and Texas Bend, Mississippi Co., Mo.; Gayoso, Caruthersville and Couter, in the swamps of Pemiscot County, Mo.; and by request of the Bishop of Little Rock, Ark., he also attended Osceola, Mississippi Co., Ark. Sometimes, in order to meet his engagements at the different missions in Pemiscot County, he would have to ride nearly all day in a “dug-out,” experiencing a few of the difficulties the early missionaries had daily to contend with. In May, 1882, Father Connolly was transferred to the Church of the Immaculate Conception, B. V. M., St. Louis, where he remained more than one year as assistant pastor, and was thence transferred to the same position at St. Bridget’s Church, St. Louis, where he was three and one-half years. In November, 1886, he was appointed by Archbishop Kenrick, of St. Louis, to his present pastorate, in De Soto, where his labors have been successful in reducing the church debt and ministering to the increasing Catholic congregation.