26
HISTORY
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
CHAPTER X.-SECTION 1.-THE REV. EUGENE
FUNCKEN, C.R., IN ST.
AGATHA 1857 TO JULY 18, 1888.
After the departure of Father Ebner, S.J., from
St. Agatha, the parish was served by Rev. Columban Messner, O.C.,
for about one year from St. Clement's.
Father E. Funcken was born at Wanckum, a little
village in Rhenish Prussia, not far from Venloo, in Holland. He
saw the light of day Nov. 28, 1831. His father was the school teacher
of the village, his mother was a Dutch woman. I-Iaving completed
his gymnasium at Cologne, he went to Rome in 1851 and entered the
newly-founded Congregation of the Resurrection, where he made his vows
in 1853. He was ordained at Rome, July 6, 1857. Bishop De
Charbonnel, of Toronto, asked the Superior to let him have one or more
priests for Canada. The Superior promised, and soon sent the
newly-ordained Father Funcken and a young cleric, Brother Edward
Glowacki. Having traveled via Havre and New York, they arrived in
St. Agatha on the 15th- of August, 1857, the Feast of the Assumption.
On the day of his arrival he had a child's
funeral.
At that time the parish was pretty well
provided with necessary buildings, etc.
The church was fairly well furnished, the
Rectory was good, so was the school. The cemetery had been in use
for many decades, but it was an ungraded hill and poorly fenced.
The parish was extensive and the people fairly well-to-do.
The parish included the villages of Waterloo, Berlin, Strassburg,
Williamsburg, Mannheim, New Dundee, Shingletown, Petersburg, Baden, New
Hamburg, Philipsburg, Bamberg, Erbsville and Rummelhart. New
Prussia and South East Hope were dependent missions. All through
this large territory Catholics were scattered more or less numerously.
They must have made a population of 600 families or more.
Many lived so far away that they could scarcely be expected to
attend the church at all regularly, and would naturally not contribute
much to its support.
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CHAPTER X.-SECT10N 2.-REV. E. FUNCKEN,
CONTINUED.-THE CEMETERY.
Finding the cemetery in poor condition, Father
Funcken made it his first greater work to improve it. It was a
steep hill gradually ascending from the Petersburg Road to the rear
limit. A stone wall was first built along the road about 9 or ten
feet high over the level of the road, then up the two sides. When
graded the wall was continued from one rear corner to the other.
This cost an immense amount of material and labor. On the
top of the wall neat little turrets were erected at equal distances
from each other to receive the Fourteen Stations of the Cross.
Near the rear wall half-way between the corners, he had a nice
small Gothic Chapel erected of brick crowned with a neat spire.
The wall on the south side was later removed when the cemetery
had to be enlarged. Its stones were used in the erection of a
large addition to