19

Mary Zurko interviewed by Denis Mercier -12- 8/21/72
Tape 12-1

man.
DM: To get back to the church, were there services of any sort other than Sunday services? Were there things like stations of the cross and the whole b-- you know, the whole Catholic ritual abotu the - like Holy Thursday and Good Friday and ...
MZ: Yes, he'd come over and have stations of the cross. But that was done away with, too, you know.
DM: Well, toward the end, I imagine it was.
MZ: He'd come over on Saturdays and hear confession. Go up there to church and hear confession.
DM: But, when you were, let's say, attending that church regularly, when that church was in its full bloom, there were other services, let's say - oh, boy - let's say, forty hours' devotion, did they ever have that?
MZ: Well, not in my, not that I can remember, Dennis. But there was, you know, when the town was full of, this town was all Irish, you know. And this was the Protestant end down here, you know. It was, they were all the bosses and different things, you know, the high muckety-mucks!
DM: Is that significant? Is the location of the Catholic church significant, that it was "uptown" where all the Irish and the miners were, and the bosses, and the muckety-mucks, were down here and all the Protestants? Is that really, I wondered about that...
MZ: Well, all the Protestants lived down here, yes. Mother would tell you that. But, mind, the mingled. They mingled, you understand. There was a lot of Catholic girls married Protestant. My aunt, in fact, she married John Hill, he was Protestant. And there was a MacHue girl, she married an Aubrey, Mrs. Haughman's sister, Mrs. Haughman's brother, she married. Oh, yeah, a lot of the girls married the Protestant boys, you know.
DM: But it was kind of significant that that church was up there, where the Back Street was and all?
MZ: Oh, yeah, and the Back Street had a lot of Irish on it. Oh, that was...
DM: And all of them went to...
MZ: Yes, they were Irish, too, yeah. But then, as they needed the miners, they were immigrating from Poland and Slovaks, Czechoslovakia, and Russians, you know, and, come in here, yeah...
DM: A lot of them are still surviving today.
MZ: Oh, yeah.
DM: Well, there are only three or four Irish families in town.
MZ: that's all there are, my brother Jimmy, and - Jimmy Denion - and me and Margaret!
DM: And you and Margaret! That's right!
MZ: And I don't make no, I don't metion about goin' to church. I go with Mrs. ??? to Saint John's, and I go to Saint Anne's and what not. I have my sons married to Polish girls, and my daughter is married to a Slovak fellow, and...
DM: That's almost inevitable, though, because look how many Slovaks and Poles there are around here.
MZ: And my other grandson, he is married to a Protestant girl. So you, there's no distinction made.
DM: I wanted to ask a couple other questions before - I don't want to keep you too long, but I wanted to ask about, how was the, do you remember how the church was built? In other words, I don't mean, how it was put together with wood, but where the money came from. The company didn't make that, make this thing, did they?
MZ: You know who put this church up, Dennis?