Louis de Barth

Adolphus Louis de Barth Walbach (November 1, 1764 – October 13, 1844), commonly known as Louis de Barth, was a Franco-American Roman Catholic priest in Pennsylvania and Maryland.

Biography

De Barth was born November 1, 1764, in the town of Munster, in Alsace, France.^[1] He was the son of a French nobleman, Joseph de Barth, and his wife, Marie Louisa de Rohme.^[1] After attending college in Belgium, he enrolled in a seminary in Strasbourg and was ordained there in 1790.^[2] The French Revolution forced many noble families into exile, including de Barth's, and they moved to the United States in 1791.^{[lower-alpha 1][2]} De Barth renounced his titles and presented himself to John Carroll, the bishop of Baltimore, for service as a secular priest.^[2]

After spending three years serving in Port Tobacco, Maryland, de Barth relocated a church in Pennsylvania in 1795.^[2] The main church in the area, Conewago Chapel, was the center of the only parish in 10,000 square miles of the Pennsylvania frontier, an area that contained few Catholics.^[3] The sparsely populated area had been mostly settled by Germans, who were pleased to have one who spoke their own language as a priest.^[4] Michael Francis Egan, an Irish Franciscan, joined him there in 1802.^[5] In 1804, de Barth was formally put in charge of Conewago Chapel, which had previously under the jurisdiction of the Jesuits.^[6] At the same time, he continued making visitations to the small rural chapels in the area.^[7]

In 1814, Egan (now bishop of Philadelphia) promoted de Barth to the position of Vicar General.^[8] Egan died shortly thereafter.^[9] Until a suitable bishop could be found, Carroll, now Archbishop of Baltimore, appointed de Barth as the apostolic administrator.^[8] De Barth tried to refuse this assignment, likely due to the ongoing disputes in Philadelphia between the clergy and the lay trustees of the city's parishes, but he eventually accepted and took temporary control of the diocese.^[9] He spent little time in the city, leaving day-to-day control of the parishes there to Terrence McGill, a local priest.^[9]

Carroll considered requesting de Barth's appointment as bishop, but decided against it because of de Barth's lack of theological study and reputation for having a quick temper.^[10] Carroll died in 1815, and his successor, Leonard Neale, offered de Barth the position of bishop, but de Barth declined it. In a letter to Neale, de Barth wrote that

if you do not forward my objections [to the appointment] to the Holy See ... I will not accept, but will kneel down and devoutly put the bulls in the fire ... and then farewell, Monseigneur. Neither you nor anyone else shall ever know the corner of the globe where I shall vegetate the few years still left to me to live.^[11]

Neale accepted de Barth's refusal, and the see remained vacant. In 1817, after Neale died, de Barth traveled to Baltimore to participate in the episcopal consecration of Neale's successor, Ambrose Maréchal.^{[lower-alpha 2][12]}

After a vacancy of five years, the see of Philadelphia finally found a new bishop in Henry Conwell, an Irish-born priest who was installed in 1819, freeing de Barth to return to Conewago.^[11] De Barth remained at Conewago until 1828 when Maréchal's successor in Baltimore, James Whitfield, appointed him pastor of St. John German Catholic Church in that city.^[13] He served there for several years and, when the parish closed in 1841, de Barth retired to Georgetown College in Washington, D.C., to live out his final years.^[13] He died there on October 13, 1844, at the age of seventy-nine, and was buried in the cemetery of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington.^[13]

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