"The Ideals of the New Quakerism," I have commented on Irish
acquisition of a character like that of the Quakers. The gentleness of
manner, the quickness of social sympathy and the industrious quietness
of the Quakers have come to be theirs. Yet they are loyal Catholics, and
with very few exceptions support their Church in the village regularly.
Many of them who have not conveyances have for years employed a
stage-driver to transport them on Sunday morning to St. Bernard's
Church. This church has been built by the Irish and Irish-Americans. At
the time of their coming in 1840-1850, there was no Catholic church, and
"if you wanted to hear mass said, you had to drive to Poughkeepsie."
Later, a tent was erected for a time, for the Catholic services, then a
Baptist church building was purchased. This building was destroyed by
fire about 1875, and the present structure in the village was erected.

The Catholic population of the Hill is now equal to the Quaker
population, there being of each twenty-five households; the old and the
new. But each has gone through striking changes since the Catholics
came, sixty years ago. "When I was a boy," says a prominent
Irish-American, "you could hardly see the road here for the carriages
and the dust, all of them Quakers going to the Old Meeting House, on
Sunday, or to Quarterly Meeting. But now they are all gone." The
religious faithfulness of those Friends of two generations ago has
descended upon no part of the population more fully than upon the
handful of Catholic families, who now drive to Pawling every Sunday in
great wagon-loads, while the members of the Quaker households have
closed their meeting houses forever.

Of the Irish-Catholic population here described only eleven are Irish
born. The rest, about ninety in number, are American born of Irish
parents.

The other elements who have been adopted into the Quaker Hill population
are small in number in comparison with the Irish. They are among the
working people, one Swiss, two Poles, who have bought small places at
Sites 42 and 75, respectively; and two New York ladies who about 1890
purchased places at Sites 41 and 35, who have become a strong influence,
being socially and religiously in sympathy with the original Quaker
population. Their influence is described in the chapter upon "The Common
Mind of the Mixed Community." Purchases of land have been made in the
years 1905-1907, more than in the preceding decade, by persons com