Ellen Hayes figured prominently in the Cathedral's early years

Intermountain Catholic

+ Enlarge

Ellen Hayes

By Gary Topping 

SALT LAKE CITY — Before the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, the Catholic Church for most lay people was largely a spectator sport. That was particularly true for women, who were expected to keep their heads covered in church and pretty much stay out of the way, except for participation in the parish altar society and perhaps the Catholic Woman’s League. Despite those restrictions, several women in the early history of the Cathedral of the Madeleine played vital roles in the construction and decoration of the church and in the establishment of its programs.

One of them was Miss Ellen Hayes. Born in the coastal village of Youghal in County Cork, Ireland in 1856, Ellen Hayes was one of eight siblings – four boys and four girls.

The location of her birthplace and the fact that she and her brother William became business people suggests that the Hayeses may have been a mercantile rather than an agricultural family.

Ellen, William and another brother, Edward, who was a priest, joined the great Irish migration to America spurred by the Potato Famine of the 1840s. She never married, realizing, like many Irish women of the day, that marriage would likely tie her into agricultural poverty, while remaining single meant greater opportunities.

Ellen Hayes emigrated to San Francisco in 1884 and eventually joined her merchant brother William, who had come in 1869, in the Nevada mining camps.

The Hayes siblings wisely calculated, as had others like Levi Strauss in San Francisco, that there were more reliable financial prospects in mining the miners than in the mines themselves. Starting out with a bath house, they expanded their businesses to include a general store, a hotel, and large real estate investments.

When William died in 1904, Ellen ran all the enterprises herself. Although the Hayeses had made a modest fortune prior to the arrival of the railroad in Ely, Nev. in 1906, their real estate holdings made her truly rich with the rapidly expanding population.

The eastern parishes in Nevada were part of the Diocese of Salt Lake until creation of the Diocese of Reno in 1931, but most of them, like Ely, were so remote that they received very little pastoral care.

Ellen Hayes, however, was a highly dedicated Catholic who refused to let that isolation discourage her. She maintained a room in her home where the occasional passing priest could celebrate Mass, and she donated land on which the little Sacred Heart Catholic Church was erected.

In 1907 she finally succeeded in getting Bishop Lawrence Scanlan, the first Bishop of Salt Lake City, to assign a priest to the parish. The same year, she built a reading room attached to the church where miners could spend their evenings instead of drinking and carousing in town.

Ellen Hayes had a long and warm friendship with Bishop Scanlan, whom she had known both in San Francisco and Nevada. When he began construction of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in 1900, she was a major financial supporter. One can still see her name as donor of the Presentation stained glass window on the west side of the Cathedral and the Ascension window directly across in the east (the latter dedicated to the memory of her brother William).

In addition, she anonymously donated the original organ in the Cathedral, but Bishop Scanlan eventually talked her into letting him acknowledge her. On April 24, 1909, during one of her visits to Salt Lake City, she attended a private organ concert by Cathedral organist Nora Gleason so she could enjoy the magnificent instrument in its proper setting. Unfortunately, she died in San Francisco about a week and a half before the dedication of the Cathedral and thus was not part of that great celebration to which she had contributed so much.

Even in death, she continued to support the diocese. Most of her fortune came to the diocese as an endowment, the dividends of which contributed to diocesan funds for years.

Less successful was the portion of her fortune which she earmarked for the creation of a miners’ hospital in Ely. The $20,000 endowment turned out to be insufficient, and the need came to be perceived as less acute than she had thought.

After creation of the Diocese of Reno, Utah Bishop John J. Mitty, realizing that the money would be contested between the two dioceses, went to England to meet with the surviving Hayes siblings. Eventually, the decision was made to expend the hospital endowment on other religious purposes.

Miss Ellen Hayes is an inspiring example of a brave and resourceful woman who carved out a successful life for herself in a man’s world. On the Western frontier where most single women were either prostitutes or schoolteachers, she created prosperous and diverse business enterprises, helped establish the Catholic Church in a wild mining town, and became a potent force for civilization.

Gary Topping is the Diocese of Salt Lake City archivist.