“An Imperishable Gift to Pittsburgh” by Marian Bonsall appeared in a 1935 issue of The Pittsburgh Catholic.
This tribute to the late Msgr. A. A. Lambing, Pittsburgh’s famous priest-historian, is from the pen of a local non-Catholic writer who was in contact with him in the days when he was making his researches for some of his later work. Msgr. Lambing died on Dec. 24, 1918, at the age of 76. His “History of the Catholic Church in Pittsburgh and Allegheny” (1880) and “Foundation Stones of a Great Diocese“ (191k) are standard works of reference, and his many other writings for periodicals and for historical organizations contain invaluable data regarding early events in this district. Ordained in 1869, he was pastor of St. Mary’s Church, at the Point, from 1874 to 1885, and was pastor of St. James’, Wilkinsburg from 1885 until his death.
A great man, a great priest, used sometimes to stand with his thoughts at the edge of the sharp triangle where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio. This monsignor, with keen eyes behind spectacles, with the magnificent white hair, a superb ability to scold you when you needed it, and swift action always to help, we called Father Lambing, in spite of his titles and degrees. As he stood on that celebrated bit of earth, mentally he peeled off the neighboring railroad, bridges and buildings, the houseboats and all that as modern and unkempt; and he saw the ground he stood on as the hunting ground of prehistoric tribes of Indians. Then for him the drama of Pittsburgh’s Point would century by century unfold.
Father Lambing would go home to the parish house at Wilkinsburg, and in his scant leisure at the end of the day preserve in writing for those who would live after him, further records of that drama. He must have loved writing this history, great as the cost in labor, time and weariness for his eyes knew the campfires and his ears the Indian signals. With the inner eyes of the born historian, he had seen the rivers flowing in their majesty between these foothills, when they knew no craft but the Indian canoes He had seen that brilliantly colored apparition so amazing to the Indians, when the French Chevalier, Celeron de Bienville, with his chaplain, officers, Canadians and Indians to the number of around two hundred, sailed down the Allegheny and Ohio in 1749, under the banner of the lilies of France, to bury at strategic points the leaden plates that told in writing that the land thus surveyed was taken for the King of France. The Jesuit Father Bonnecamps had been chaplain. There had been Mass and chants and cries of “Vive le Roi!“
Father Lambing had seen in the years that followed Celeron’s journey, the growing rivalry between the English and the French in their desire to possess this pointed wilderness which commanded the Ohio valley. He had seen the handful of Virginians, in the spring of 1754, begin the building of the first fort, for the English King; and had seen—in another expedition that looked very much as Celeron’s had looked—another French Chevalier, the Captain Contrecoeur, sailing with his flotilla down the Allegheny River, and swooping down on the unfinished fort on an April evening: assuming command in the name of the French King, and inviting the English garrison to supper.
These were interesting men, in the brief period when the future Pittsburgh was French: Contrecoeur, the commandant; Beaujeu, who heard Mass, confessed, then dressed in Indian disguise and led his Indians into Braddock’s battle where he was killed; the Franciscan, Rev. Denys Baron, chaplain. French officers and soldiers. The Indian allies in the huts outside the fort.
Father Lambing knew every angle of the fort they built and named “Fort Duquesne under the title of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin of the Beautiful River”. He knew the land entrance and the water entrance, and the clanging drawbridge they pulled up at night, and how they managed when it was high water.
In the study at Wilkinsburg Father Lambing wrote of all these things, and out of his scholarship and gift for human details, supplied such notes as most of us can find gathered together nowhere else, living with the very breath and color and sound of life.
The First Baptismal Register
Among the books he has written for us, is Father Lambing’s own translation from the French of the “Baptismal Register of Fort Duquesne, from June, 1754, to December, 1756,”. Of all the books in our great public library, this, to the lovers of Pittsburgh history, is one of the most exciting. Would you see the living people whom a strange fate brought to the fort in the wilderness? Would you know whether they baptized the little twelve year old Mohegan Indian girl, Denise, ”who ardently, desired holy Baptism?“ They did, and Denise died two days later and was buried in the cemetery of the fort. Who came to be married? Father Lambing’s introduction and notes captured the essence of this time.
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And may Father Lambing know that we Pittsburghers thank him with grateful hearts for what he garnered and preserved, an imperishable gift. Let us use his own words of of his predecessors, and “bless the memory of those who have gone to their final rest, after having nobly performed their part in these busy scenes.”
With the bells of St. James’ Church of Wilkinsburg in one’s consciousness, it is impossible to stop without another word of the Wilkinsburg parish: where another great man, and great priest, has with his people built the gloriously beautiful church: where this monsignor, whom we call Father Walsh, remembering the worn and mellow brown and gold of the old Cathedral down town, has with his own genius captured something that belonged to the generation before, and has seen to it that a carillon of bells should ring out messages of comfort and of joy.
The Genealogical and Personal History of Western Pennsylvania edited by John W. Jordan tells:
Rev. Andrew A. Lambing, LL.D., Roman Catholic priest and author, was born at Manorville, Armstrong county, Pennsylvania, February 1, 1842. He is descended from Christopher Lambing, who emigrated to America from Alsace in the vicinity of Strasburg in 1749, and settled in Bucks county, where he died about 1817, at the age of ninety-nine years. Some of his family passed to Adams county, where his son Matthew married and settled in New Oxford, where Michael A., the father of the subject of this sketch, was born October 10, 1806. The family came west to Armstrong county in 1823. Here Michael married Anne Shields, December 1, 1837. She was descended from Thomas Shields, who emigrated from county Donegal, Ireland, about 1760, and Amberson’s valley, Franklin county; but his grandson William came to Armstrong county in 1798 and made his home near Kittanning, where his daughter Anne was born July 4, 1814. Michael was the father of five sons and four daughters, of whom Andrew Arnold was the third son and child. Both parents were remarkable through life for their tender and consistent piety and for the care they bestowed on the education and training of their children. Three of their sons fought in the Civil War, one of them losing his life and another becoming disabled; two of their sons are priests, and a daughter a Sister of Charity.
Trained in the school of rigid poverty, Andrew began work on a farm before he was eight years old, and a few years later found employment in a fire-brick yard, where he spent nearly six years, with about four months’ schooling in each winter; and two years in an oil refinery, a considerable part of which time he worked from three o’clock in the afternoon to six the next morning, being at the same time foreman of the works. During this time he managed to steal a few hours as opportunity permitted to devote to study and useful reading, for reading has been the passion of his life.
At the age of twenty-one he entered St. Michael’s Preparatory and Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, where he made his course in the higher studies, frequently rising at three o’clock in the morning to continue his course, and being nearly all that time prefect of the students. He was ordained to the priesthood in the seminary chapel by Bishop Domenac. of Pittsburgh, August 4, 1869.
He was then sent to St. Francis College, Loretto, Pennsylvania, as professor, with the additional obligation of assisting the pastor of the village church on Sundays with the exception of one Sunday in each month, when he ministered to the little congregation of Williamsburg, Blair county, about forty miles distant.
On the following January he was appointed pastor of St. Patrick’s Church, Cameron Bottom, Indiana county, where he remained till the end of April, when he was named pastor of St. Mary’s Church, Kittanning, with its numerous out-missions. While there he built a little church a few miles west of the Allegheny river for the accommodation of the families residing there, and in the middle of January, 1873, he was sent to Freeport, with the additional charge of the congregation at Natrona, six miles distant. But at the end of six months he was appointed chaplain of St. Paul’s Orphan Asylum, Pittsburgh, with a view of bettering his financial condition. This, however, was rendered impossible by the financial crisis of the fall of the same year, and he was named pastor of the Church of St. Mary of Mercy, at the Point in the same city, January 7, 1874. Here he placed the schools in charge of the Sisters of Mercy, bought and fitted up a non-Catholic church for the congregation, and placed an altar in it dedicated to “Our Lady of the Assumption at the Beautiful River,“ as a memorial of the one that stood in the chapel of Fort Duquesne during the French occupation in the middle of the previous century; and also built a residence. But the encroachments of the railroads began to drive the people out in such numbers that he was transferred to St. James’ Church, Wilkinsburg, an eastern suburb of the city, October 15, 1885, where he still remains.
The congregation was then small, numbering about one hundred and sixty families, with a little frame church, but it soon began to increase rapidly. His first care was to open a school, which he placed in charge of the Sisters of Charity, and in the summer of 1888 he enlarged the church, which, however, was occupied only three months when it was entirely destroyed by fire. Nothing daunted, he immediately undertook the present combination church and school building, which was dedicated just a year after the destruction of the other. So rapid has been the growth of the town and the increase of the congregation that an assistant has been required since the spring of 1897; and, although parts of three new congregations have been taken from it, it still numbers nearly six hundred families.
As a writer Father Lambing is the author of “The Orphan’s Friend“ (1875), “The Sunday-school Teacher’s Manual“ (1877), “A History of the Catholic Church in the Dioceses of Pittsburgh and Allegheny“ (1880), “The Register of Fort Duquesne, Translated from the French, with an Introductory Essay and Notes“ (1885), “The Sacramentals of the Holy Catholic Church'' (1892), “Come Holy Ghost“ (1901), “The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary“ (1904), and “The Fountain of Living Water“ (1907). Besides these he has written a considerable number of religious and historical pamphlets, and a considerable part of the large “History of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania,“ “The Centennial History of Allegheny County“ (1888) and “The Standard History of Pittsburgh“ (1898). In 1884 he started the “Catholic Historical Researches,“ a quarterly magazine and the first of its kind devoted to the history of the Catholic church in the country, now continued by Mr. Martin I. J. Griffin, of Philadelphia, as a monthly; and he is a constant contributor to periodicals on religious and historical subjects. The editor of “The Standard History of Pittsburgh“ says of him that “He has done more than any other one man to place in permanent form the valuable and fast-perishing early records.“ For a number of years he was president of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, and he is one of the trustees of the Carnegie Institute and the Carnegie Technical School of Pittsburgh.
As a churchman he was for many years president of the Clerical Relief Association of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and was president of the board that prepared the diocesan school exhibit for the Columbian Exposition. For nine years he was fiscal procurator of the diocese of Pittsburgh, has long been the censor of books, and is now president of the diocesan school board. Of regular habits and inheriting the health of his fathers, standing six feet tall with heavy frame, he seems built for labor and endurance, and he was more than thirty years on the mission before he was off duty for a single day on account of ill health, although he has never taken a vacation. In 1883, the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, conferred upon him the degree of Master of Arts, and two years later that of Doctor of Laws.
The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine in 1919 published this remembrance, “Death of Right Reverand Monsignor Andrew Arnold Lambing, LL. D.”
Western Pennsylvania’s most noted historian is dead. Full of years and honors, as well as good works, the Rt. Rev. Monsignor Andrew Arnold Lambing answered the call of his Maker at the rectory of St. James’ Roman Catholic Church, Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, on December 24, 1918.
Father Lambing was born in Manorville, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, on February 1, 1842, and was the third son and child of Michael A. and Anne Shields Lambing. He was a descendant of Christian Lambing, who emigrated from Germany and settled in Bucks County, in this state, in 1749. He began work on his father’s farm and later obtained employment in a brick works. While still quite young he was employed in an oil refinery. When twenty-one years of age he entered St. Michael’s Theological Seminary, Glenwood, Pittsburgh, where he worked his way through. In August, 1869, he was ordained priest by the late Bishop Domenec.
After his ordination he was assigned as a professor to St. Francis College, Loretto. Later he was appointed rector of St. Patrick’s Church of Cameron Bottom, Indiana County and afterward served as pastor in Kittanning and Freeport churches. In the summer of 1873 he came to Pittsburgh as chaplain of St. Paul’s Orphan Asylum. After one year’s service there he took charge of the St. Mary of Mercy congregation at the Point, Pittsburgh. In October, 1885, he became rector of St. James’ Church of Wilkinsburg, to which he was attached up to the time of his last sickness.
His studies in history began at an early day. The first inspiration to write on matters of local concern was no doubt received while serving as rector of the church of St. Mary of Mercy. In that neighborhood many stirring scenes were enacted and here the contest between French and English civilization was concluded; and one of Father Lambing’s earliest essays in historical literature was the account of “Mary’s First Shrine in the Wilderness. ” But in his younger days his literary inclinations were largely in the direction of the church of which he was a brilliant ornament. During this period he published such educational and religious works as “The Orphans Friend, ” “Mixed Marriages, ” and “The Sunday School Teachers Manual. ” In 1880 he brought out his “History of the Catholic Dioceses of Pittsburgh and Allegheny, ” and a few years later he began the publication of the “Catholic Historical Researches, ” a quarterly magazine devoted to the history of the Catholic church in this country. In 1886 he received the degree of doctor of laws from the University of Notre Dame; and in 1915 the Pope appointed him domestic prelate, an honorary dignity which carried with it the title of Monsignor.
Among his works of a more general historical character is the “Register of Fort Duquesne, ” being a record of the marriages and deaths at that famous stronghold while in the occupancy of the French. Perhaps his best known writings are his contributions to the “Centennial History of Allegheny County, ” the first eight chapters in the “History of Allegheny County, ” and his work on the “Standard History of Pittsburgh. ” He was for many years one of the trustees of the Carnegie Institute. At one time he was President of the Ohio Valley Catholic Historical Society. He was long a prominent member, and for some years the honored president of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Society. To him much of the early success of the organization is attributable. No member will be more missed than this genial kindly priest.
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Marian Bonsall, “An Imperishable Gift to Pittsburgh,” The Pittsburgh Catholic, February 28, 1935, p. 7.
Jordan, John W. ed., Genealogical and Personal History of Western Pennsylvania, vol. 3. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1915, pp. 1457–1459.
“Death of Right Reverend Monsignor Andrew Arnold Lambing, LL. D. ” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, 1919, pp. 36–37.
Rev. A. A. Lambing, LL. D., “Brief Sketch of St. James’ Roman Catholic Church, Wilkinsburg, Pa.” circa 1912, portrait p. 35.