History
Part 1: The Origins of St. Mary's
Part 2: 1922-1939: A Mission Church of Sacred Heart Parish
Part 3: 1939-1961: A Mission Church of St. Rose of Lima Parish
Part 4: Since 1961: An Independent Parish
Epilogue: Pastor's Vision for the Future
Acknowledgments: About this history
Part 5:
Feast of the Assumption History (written Aug. 2009)
Part One: The Origins of St. Mary's
In 1922 (the year St. Mary's was dedicated) Achille Cardinal ratti became Pope Pius XI, President Warren harding dedicated the Lincoln Memorial, and anthropologist Margaret Mead began her pioneering study of American-born children of Italian immigrants in Hammonton. Sixteen miles away in rural southern New Jersey, Italian immigrants who had recently settled in the Malaga area were making America their adopted homeland.
Mass Migration
The crushing poverty Italians call la miseria was the main reason for the mass emigration from Italy that began in the 1870s and lasted half a century. Over this period almost 17 million people left for other countries in western Europe and abroad (Martellone 1984). These emigrants first went to countries north of the Alps; later, they went to South America, Australia, and the United States.
During the 1860s, a military revolt in Italy, called the Risorgimento, had resulted in expulsion of foreign rulers and, by 1870, the political unification of the country (Stearns 1974). Everyone had looked forward better economic conditions, but by the mid-1870s it became clear that nothing was going to change for those in the impoverished countryside. In search of a better life elsewhere, several generations of Italy's more daring young people tore up their roots and separated from their families for years (forever in many cases).
Those who left were mainly from villages in Italy's extensive mountainous areas. Most of them had spent their adolescence tilling small parcels of marginal land with the same kinds of hand tools and outdated methods their ancestors had been using for centuries. Beginning in the north and spreading southward, the mass emigration eventually affected all of Italy.
A new Century, A new Land
The United States was the destination of approximately one-third of Italy's 17-million-strong exodus. The majority of those who came here were southern Italians who arrived after the turn of the century, when manual-labor jobs in America's burgeoning factories and mines were abundant. The pay was low (typically fifteen cents an hour) and the hours long (ten hours a day, six days a week), but a single person who lived frugally could send some money back home to needy parents and siblings.
For those who were married and had children, however, the meager wages translated into a miserable existence. Some immigrants left squalid American neighborhoods to return to their native villages. Others, more bold, forewent employement in urban sweatshops or unsafe mines for self-employment in rural settings where they could be independent and use their Old World agricultural skills to live off the land.
Malaga in the 1800s
Malaga had its beginning in 1814 when Mr. Christopher Stanger purchased a large tract of land in southern Gloucester County and built a water-powered sawmill on Scotland Run. Mr. Stanger's mill was the first local industry after the departure of the Lenape Indians who had inhabited the area surrounding Scotland Run and Malaga Lake in the eighteenth century (and earlier).
The high-quality sand available in Malaga made it a natural site for glass production. The Pioneer Glass Works, which was built with lumber from the Stanger sawmill, became the main employer, and the fledgling village became another south Jersey "glass town" whose fortunes went up and down with those of the glass business. The Pioneer Glass Works eventually became the Malaga Glass Works. But it succombed to competition from a larger operation in Glassboro, which became the [emphasis added] Jersey glass-making town by 1880 (McMahon 1973).
In the late 1850s, the railroad from Philadelphia was extended wouthward to Millville with a station at Malaga. This enabled local farmers to get their produce (squash, tomatoes, beans, and so forth) to Philadelphia or New York while still fresh. Area farmers increased their production of vegetable crops and, by the end of the century,agriculture and related businesses became the main sources of income.
By 1884 the population of Malaga had grown to several hundred. Most of the town's inhabitants were of English, German, Irish, Swedish, or Welsh ancestry. That year the townspeople built a Methodist church, which still stands at the corner of Harding Highway and Old Delsea Drive.
Malaga's Italian Settlers
In the light of the hilly, barren fields left behind in Italy, Italians fleeing nearby cities were impressed by what Malaga had to offer: flat terrain with an abundant growth of trees. Some of the woodland had been cleared, and the deep, fertile soil supported productive vineyards and a plentitude of fruits and vegetables. The young couples who could afford it bought arable land; others with more limited resources purchased woodland and cleared it by hand with the generosity of neighbors who lent their horses to help dislodge the larger stumps.
The indigenous population of Malaga accepted and helped their new neighbors, and the local school teachers painstakingly taught the immigrants' children English (and other subjects). The immigrants eagerly responded with hard work and, eventually, they realized the fruits of their labor. By Old World standards most became well-off: They owned the land they tilled and whatever they produced was theirs.
A New Church
By 1920 almost 100 Italian couples had settled in the Malaga area. Each couple typically had two or three children approaching the age of first Communion, and parents became concerned about the lack of a nearby Catholic church and Catholic instruction for their children. The nearest churches were in Vineland and Landisville, which were difficult to reach by horse and buggy over the roads of the times. Native-born Catholics had become similarly concerned.
In 1921 Messrs. Thomas Burns, Antonio Cesare, Pietro (Peter) Colucci, and Giovanni (John) DiMatteo visited Bishop Thomas Walsh in Trenton (the Camden diocese had not yet been created) to inquire about building a Catholic church in Malaga. The bishop said that he would provide half the funds if local people could provide the rest.
After a successful fund-raising campaign to which even non-Catholics contributed (see Figure 1), a local contractor built St. Mary's Church for less than $10,000. Completed in 1922, the new brick church could accommodate 150 worshipers. Its modest steeple, centered over the main entrance, housed a single bell.
For seventy-five years[now 86 years!], the original structure has been a place of worship not only for the founders and their descendants, but also for numerous others who moved into the area and became part of St. Mary's parish family.