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2009-11-20

2009-11-18

2009-11-05

Agriculture

Lifestyles

Thursday, October 01, 2009 11:21 AM

File photo/The Ottawa Herald

Parishioners attend Mass Sept. 3, 2005, at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Emerald. Emerald, though never incorporated, was a town settled by Irish immigrants.

Emerald church, community still have their luster

Faith, family, fellowship thriving

By COURTNEY SERVAES, Herald Staff Writer

Photo by Elliot J. Sutherland/The Ottawa Herald

St. Patrick Catholic Church, founded in 1857, once was called the Cathedral of the Plains. The dome was removed in September 2007 to install a new roof.

WILLIAMSBURG — Agnes Wilper isn’t a cradle member.

Rather, 85-year-old Wilper was married into the church 61 years ago.

And she’s attended St. Patrick Catholic Church, Williamsburg, ever since.

“It is a beautiful location, and there are nice people,” Wilper said of the church — which turned 150 years old this summer. “It’s a nice milestone.”

Wilper and other members of the church plan to celebrate the church’s birthday this weekend — now that renovations to the church have been completed.

Surviving

The church building — with its rich Roman-style architecture and main center tower — has been through a lot over the years, Wilper said.

Lightning storms. Wind damage. Fires.

But it’s still there, on a hilltop near the Anderson County and Franklin County line, in a place known to some as Emerald.

“It is kind of a special place to a lot of people,” Wilper’s daughter, Ina, said.

The church founders came to Kansas from Ireland sometime just after 1850, Dorothy Lickteig, director of the Anderson County Historical Society, said. Once here, they established the city of Emerald — though it never was incorporated.

“It became essential to build a church,” Lickteig said of the first Emerald church built in 1865 using stone and wood from the area. “The building was crude and primitive, but it was fine for them.”

Thriving

It’s tough keeping small communities going, Ina Wilper said.

At its peak, the community of Emerald was home to about 75 families, Lickteig said. Now, that number is much smaller.

“It’s had its moments where it was trickling down to just a few of the older citizens whose children even left,” she said.

But not now.

Now members are returning. Families who left the church are coming back.

“It’s a thriving community again,” Ina Wilper said. “Something that remote often loses luster for younger people, but I think it’s actually grown as opposed to shrank.”

Preserving

It’s not the same now.

As the congregation began to grow throughout the late 1800s, another church — with Roman-style architecture, a central dome, three entrances and eight large stained-glass windows — was constructed, Lickteig said.

That church, with the exception of its outer shell, was destroyed in a fire in September of 1939.

“It was really beautiful,” Ina Wilper said.

Parishioners were determined to save the church and have since renovated it to add a basement with a kitchen, as well as new carpeting and a lift for handicapped and elderly members.

And although the church is not an exact replica of its former self, the location — the land, the hilltop, the history — still remain.

“Right now, the older people are still the farmers,” Agnes Wilper said. “The younger people are working other places and coming back.”