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"Up to eight or nine years ago, a Catholic was almost unknown in Brentwood. Now they are quite numerous" (Peter Ross, History of Long Island, 1902).
Indeed they were! In the summer of 1895, local resident Charles Van Nostrand, representing his fellow Catholics, asked the Most Reverend Charles E. McDonnell, second Bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn, to establish a parish in Brentwood. Van Nostrand, whose father was a convert to Catholicism, was the station agent for the Long Island Rail Road. In a small house two hundred yards west of the station, he taught catechism to a group of children. His grand nephews were Msgr. Elwood Purick and Msgr. Myron Purick, who became pastor of St. Patrick's Parish, Bay Shore in 1948.
Until the establishment of St. Anne's Parish, Catholics in the areas of Bay Shore, Brentwood, Central Islip, Commack and Deer Park were served by "circuit riders," priests who lived elsewhere and visited only to say Mass on Sundays. Between 1858 and 1860, Father Michael O'Neill of St. Agnes in Greenport ministered in this area. In 1860, Father Jeremiah Crowley of St. Patrick Parish in Huntington succeeded O'Neill and founded a mission-- St. Patrick's Church in Bay Shore, and continued to minister to the Catholic population of our area.
When Charles Van Nostrand petitioned the bishop, McDonnell was in Rome. Msgr. Joseph McNamara, Vicar General of the
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Diocese and pastor of St. Joseph's Church on Pacific Street in Brooklyn, dispatched two of his curates, Father Edward Hannigan and Father William Reilly, to offer Mass in Brentwood. Mass was said in a rented store next to the old post office on First Avenue. Later, Msgr. McNamara appointed Hannigan as the administrator of the fledgling parish. It was he who said the first official Mass of St. Anne's Parish in the old Quanahasset Hotel (First Avenue) on July 3, 1895. Present at the Mass was a group of first communicants and two altar boys (his nephews) all of whom had been trained by "Charlie Van." When Bishop McDonnell returned from Rome in October, he gave his approval for the new parish and appointed Father Henry Murray as first pastor. Murray was thirty-three years old and had been a priest for five years; this was his first pastorate.
Brentwood started life as "Modern Times," a utopian community founded in 1851; a social experiment based on the notions of the sovereignty of the individual, equitable commerce and barter in exchange for goods and services. Women had the right to marry, divorce, co-habit and raise children as the legal equals of men. It was a cash-less society; the coin of the realm was labor notes. Modern Times never supported more than 150 people. Its claim to fame (or infamy) was a short lived experiment in "free love." The proponents of this lifestyle were Mary Gove and Thomas Lou Nichols. Never fully accepted, the movement
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