1. Bernard Donnelly was an Irish Catholic priest who ministered to the Catholic community in Kansas City, Missouri in the nineteenth century; he was the founder of Kansas City's Irish community.
16 Facts About Bernard Donnelly
1. 2.
Bernard Donnelly was born in Kilnacreeva, County Cavan, Ireland in 1810.
3.
Bernard Donnelly was educated in Cavan and Dublin as an engineer and earned his first job helping to build the docks in Liverpool in the 1820s and 1830s.
4.
Bernard Donnelly immigrated to the United States in the late 1830s, first settling in Philadelphia where he worked as a teacher.
5.
In 1840 Bernard Donnelly enrolled in St Mary's of the Barrens Seminary with the intention of serving as a Roman Catholic priest for the Irish community in the United States.
6.
Bernard Donnelly was ordained a priest in 1845 by Peter Richard Kenrick, Archbishop of St Louis.
7.
Bernard Donnelly was assigned to St Mary's Parish in Independence, Missouri where he earned the nickname "the Pioneer Priest".
8.
Bernard Donnelly served as a priest to the French community living at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers established by Francois Chouteau in 1821.
9.
Bernard Donnelly was one of the early proponents of local development.
10.
Bernard Donnelly organized a group of 300 Irish immigrants, mostly from the counties of Connacht to come to Kansas City and begin the process of carving through the bluffs of the Missouri River that were a barrier between the town's original plot and the river landings in the West and East Bottoms.
11.
Bernard Donnelly constructed was a new brick Church of the Immaculate Conception built on the site of the old Church of St John Francis Regis.
12.
Bernard Donnelly was given permission to establish a new parish in Kansas City called St Patrick's in 1869 next to which Fr.
13.
Bernard Donnelly established a brickworks that became central to the construction of many of the original buildings of the new city.
14.
Bernard Donnelly died on 15 December 1880, in his parish rectory.
15.
Bernard Donnelly was buried in Mount St Mary's Cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri.
16.
Bernard Donnelly is the namesake of the first modern division of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in the State of Kansas, which was founded in 2002.