before that event, covers three quarters of its century.

George McCloskey was one of the few energetic Catholics, who, about
1820, started the movement which led to the erection of St. James on Jay
Street, and gave Brooklyn its first Catholic Church and future
Cathedral. Meanwhile, his son carefully trained at home, was sent to
school at an early age; gentle and delicate, he had neither strength nor
inclination for the rough sports of his schoolmates; but was always
cheerful and popular, studying hard and winning a high grade in his
classes. Till the church in Brooklyn was built, the boy and his mother
made their way each Sunday to the riverside to cross by the only
conveyance of those days, in order to occupy the pew which the
large-hearted George McCloskey had purchased in St. Peter's, for in
those days pews were sold and a yearly ground rent paid. When St.
Patrick's was opened, an appeal was made to the liberal to take pews in
that church also, and again the generous George McCloskey responded to
the call, purchasing a pew there also.

This whole-souled Irish-Catholic built great hopes on the talents of his
son, and intended to send him to Georgetown College, of which Father
Benedict Fenwick, long connected with St. Peter's, had become president.
But in the providence of God he was not to see him enter any college;
while still in the prime of life, he was seized with illness, which
carried him to the grave in 1820. Mrs. McCloskey was left with means
which enabled her to carry out the plans of her husband; but as Father
Fenwick had left Georgetown, she acted on the advice of friends, and
sent her son to the College of Mount St. Mary's, which had been founded
near Emmittsburg, by the Rev. John Du Bois, a French priest, who,
escaping the horrors of the Revolution in his own country, and the
sanguinary tribunals of his old schoolmate, Robespierre, had crossed the
Atlantic to be a missionary in America.

Mount St. Mary's College, when young McCloskey entered it after the
summer of 1821, consisted of two rows of log buildings; "but such as
have often been in this country, the first home of men and institutions
destined to greatness and renown." Humble as it was externally, however,
the college was no longer an experiment; it had proved its efficiency as
an institution of learning. Young McCloskey entered on his studies with
his wonted zeal and energy, and learned not only the classics of ancient
and modern times, but th