1830's - Niagara Peninsula & St. John Neumann
The early history of Good Shepherd Parish in Pendleton coincides with the development of Western New York. That section of the Niagara peninsula called Pendleton is twenty-fives miles southeast of Fort Niagara and twenty miles northeast of Buffalo. Inn the early 1830's, German immigrants from Bavaria settled and tilled the land. The French from Canada, Lorraine and Alsace (Germanic regions of France) along with Irish and German laborers who had worked on the Erie Canal, settled along its banks.
Many of these Germans, French and Irish were Roman Catholics. Their spiritual needs could only be served with difficulty because at that time, the entire state of New York was a single Roman Catholic Diocese with the Episcopal seat located in New York City, some four hundred and fifty miles to the southeast. In 1836, Bishop John Dubois of the New York Diocese, sent a young priest, John Neumann, to Western New York, via the newly opened Erie Canal.
Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Church
good.shepherd5442@gmail.com 716-625-8594