n a thorough working basis, and
he has the admiration of Cardinal Gibbons. Father Uncles was born
in Baltimore November 6, 1859, and his parents and grandparents
were free negroes. His father was a machinist and worked for
years with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. His mother is still
living.

"He was baptized at St. Francis Xavier's Church, Calvert and
Pleasant streets, Baltimore, and there he recently said his
jubilee Mass. He studied at St. Francis's parish school and in
the public schools. He worked as printer and journalist from 1874
to 1879 and then as printer. In 1880 he began as teacher in the
Baltimore county schools, and in 1883 entered St. Hyacinth's
College, Quebec, to study. He returned to St. Joseph's Seminary
in 1888."

The same paper said on this date in its editorial columns:

"Congratulations to Father Uncles, of Baltimore, a priest, a
gentleman, a scholar--and a negro. He has just celebrated the
twenty-fifth anniversary of his entrance into the Order of Abel,
Abraham and Melchizedek.

"Father Uncles was the first of his race in this country to be
raised to the dignity of the priesthood. His was a unique
position. The eyes of the American world were upon him. Though
one of God's anointed, he was a "colored man," and thus more was
demanded of him than of any of his white brothers. At the end of
twenty-five years, he can, with his gentle good nature, laugh at
the world's scrutiny.

"For Father Uncles is gentle--a gentleman. In conversation with
him, in association with him, one never thought of the color of
his body. The beautiful whiteness of his soul shone so in the
kindly lightning of his eyes, the courtesy of his speech, the
correctness of his manner.

"He was, and is, a scholar--not merely book-learned, for he was
one of the first three in a class of sixty in Saint Mary's
Seminary, but the man of parts that bespeak the student.

"Yet he is a negro--of that long-suffering race that we first
damned into slavery and then freed into servitude. But a man's a
man for a' that, and from time to time the negro is proving that.
Father Uncles was a pioneer in that line. For emancipation's sake
he will not object to this projection of himself upon America's
mental screen."

In connection with the sketch given above