New information uncovered about Bishop Scanlan's boyhood home

Friday, Dec. 11, 2015

One of the delights of being a historian is the unexpected discovery of a new source or a bold new interpretation that reinvigorates a subject once thought closed or exhausted. Two such discoveries recently shed new light on the life of the Right Rev. Lawrence Scanlan, first Bishop of Salt Lake, about whom I mistakenly thought we knew all we were ever going to know.

One is the photograph attached to this article, an aerial view in about 1949 of the Scanlan farmstead in Ireland where the future bishop was born in 1843 and grew up. It comes from Miss Stasia Ryan, a relative of Scanlan’s mother, Catherine Ryan. I found it in the papers of Bernice Mooney, my revered predecessor as diocesan archivist, who enjoyed a lengthy correspondence with Miss Ryan.

The other discovery is a person, Mr. Eddie Fanning of Dublin, with whom I have been enjoying my own correspondence. Mr. Fanning is a distant cousin of Bishop Scanlan who is doing his own research on the family. Putting our heads together has been a very stimulating experience for me: Not only has he been able to correct some of my ignorance of Irish history and geography, but he has also rendered invaluable assistance in interpreting this photograph, which he had not seen before I sent him a copy.

The first feature one might notice in the photo is the impressive size of the establishment: the large residence with the thatched roof in the background and its associated outbuildings. The Scanlans were tenant farmers, not landowners, but Miss Ryan says they worked about one hundred acres, which would be a pretty large plot in those days of pre-mechanized farming (our Homestead Act of 1862, passed near the beginning of mechanized agriculture, provided 160 acres for a head of household). Mr. Fanning says that location has some of the best farmland in Ireland, so the Scanlans would have been prosperous and had no trouble feeding themselves and their seven children. The Scanlans, Mr. Fanning says, “would have been held in high esteem locally as a result of such a holding.” 

A parish record Mr. Fanning found from the 1840s indicates that the establishment was once even larger than the photo indicates, and included a “stable and potato house, cow and pig house and a dairy.”

“The hay shed nearest the camera,” Mr. Fanning adds, “would have been a relatively recent addition and indicative of progressive farmers.”

The thatched roof of the residence was an anachronism by the 1940s, “but some people did take pride in this form of roofing (from reeds and oats) and made great effort to maintain it – at least up to the 1960s.”  

Mr. Fanning has met Tom Gleeson, who now lives on the farm, which he bought from the Scanlans in 1947. The Gleeson family lived in the house for some 20 years. Eventually, though, maintaining the roof (and no doubt having to deal with the attendant risk of fire) became too much, and they moved into a nearby bungalow. The house fell into disrepair and was dismantled for building material.  

As for the other buildings, Mr. Fanning reports, they “remain but they are in a ‘sorry state.’”

What, then, does the foregoing information tell us about Bishop Scanlan? Primarily, I think we can realize that when the young Lawrence Scanlan came to America, he was not a destitute farmer fleeing the Potato Famine like so many of his countrymen. Rather, he was motivated by a sense of compassion for those emigrants, which is why he did his priesthood training at All Hallows College, which had been founded at about the time of his birth to provide priests who would minister to those Irishmen who had had to scatter to the four corners of the earth.

In doing so, he stood at the head of a long, happy tradition of Irish priests who have selflessly sought ordination for the Diocese of Salt Lake City long before they ever set foot in it. We are the beneficiaries of their dedication.