Excerpt from Fifty Years in Yorkville, or Annals of the Parish of St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Lawrence O'toole By 1850 the popula'tion had grown to (one can afford to omit the few Odd hundreds), and was spread over the area south of fifty-first Street be tween the two rivers. The number Of Catholics in 1851 was close on to and was growing rapidly in the last decade, and particularly in the last four years. Prior to 1785 there was no church for the ac commodation of Catholics, the faithful being ministered to in private houses on the rare occasions on which a priest visited them from Philadelphia. After 1785 and up to 1809, when the Old Cathedral parish Of St. Pat rick's was established, St. Peter's on Barclay St. Suf ficed for those Of our faith in New York. The upward march Of the population, Catholics included, may be seen from the sites Of the early churches, Barclay St. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.